J  - 


HORACE  BLAKE 


By 
MRS.  WILFRID  WARD 

Author  of  "  Great  Possessions/'  etc. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

3be  Knickerbocker  press 

1913 


COPYRIGHT,  1913 

BY 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Ube  •Knickerbocker  press,  flew  IBorb 


CONTENTS 
PART  I 

PAGE 

I.      MIGHT   IT  BE   SUDDEN?            ...  3 

II.      YOU   HAD   BETTER   STAY   IN   LONDON         .  13 

III.  THEY  ARE   SUCH   STRANGE   EYES    .             .  26 

IV.  THIS  WILL  DO  ME   GOOD        ...  30 

V.  SURELY  i  CAN'T  HAVE  FORGOTTEN  IT?  35 

VI.      HE   DID  NOT  WANT  ME                        .  4! 

VII.      ALL   LIES    ......  46 

VIII.      OUR  NEW   BISHOP    IS  APPOINTED   .             .  59 

IX.      FINIS 66 

X.      WHY    ON    EARTH    DID    I    DO    THAT?            .  71 

XL      I    PREFER   MORPHIA       ....  78 

XII.      IF  HE  DIES  NOW,   WHAT  AN   ENIGMA       .  84 

XIII.      BUT   WHEN   YOU  FORGIVE?    ...  93 

XIV.    CAN'T  THEY  LET  ME  DIE  IN  PEACE?     .  99 

XV.      NOT   VANQUISHED           .            .            .            .  1 09 


2138803 


iv  Contents 

PAG8 

XVI.  I  AM   ALSO   HAPPY    ....       I2O 

XVII.  CHILDREN,  MAKE  HASTE  HOME    .             .       126 

XVIII.  YOU   CAN   HELP   ME                .             .            .132 

XIX.  THE   WEAKNESS   OF   FAME               .             .136 

XX.  THE   SEVEN   DEVILS                .             .            '.       143 

XXI.  A   FRIEND  AT  THE  LAST   STATION          .       154 

XXII.  IS  THE   PLAY  BURNED?       .            .            .      l6o 

XXIII.  TO   PROPOSE  TO   GO  AND    TO    BE   TOLD 

NOT  TO  .  .  .  .       166 

XXIV.  MUST  I   SEE  THIS   PARIS  MAN?                .       169 

XXV.  IS   HE  DYING?               .             .            .            .       177 

XXVI.      TOO  LATE 182 

PART  II 

I.  TOO  SOON   .     .     .       .     .   193 

II.  A  REAL  BOOK      .     .     .     .   2O3 

III.  DON'T     .         .        >        .        .         .    210 

IV.  THIS   IS   MY  GREAT  CHANCE      .  .217 

V.  DON'T  SAY  POOR  FRANCE          »  ..     .    226 

VI.  LET  ME  GO  TO   BRITTANY              .            .      238 

VII.  IS  THIS   HORACE  BLAKE?   .            «    -        .      244 


Contents  v 

PAGE 

VIII.      THE  MORNING  AND   THE   EVENING        .  249 

IX.      A  WONDERFUL  WEEK           .             .             .  259 

X.      THE   WORLD  WOULD  LAUGH          .             .  264 

XI.      YOU  WERE   ABOUT  ALL   DAY         .             .  268 

XII.      HE   GROWS   MORE  AMAZINGLY    VIVID     .  274 

XIII.  YOU   ARE  AFRAID        ....  284 

XIV.  ABSOLUTELY   IN   THE  MOON           .             .  290 
XV.      SHE  WAS   HIS   LAST  CONQUEST    .             .  299 

XVI.      I   ENTREAT  YOU   TO   FORGET   IT               .  309 

XVII.      MY  CHILD 316 

PART  III 

I.      THAT  DOES  N'T  MATTER      .             .             .  329 

II.      THE   EVIL   THAT  MEN   DO  LIVES  AFTER 

THEM                                                       .             .  339 

III.  NANCY  POTTER'S  PICTURE         .         .  349 

IV.  NO;  IT'S  NO  USE     ....  356 

V.      I     LIVE     NOW     FOR     THE     CAUSE     OF 

WOMEN           .....  361 

VI.      KATE  MADE  A  SPLENDID  MISTAKE      .  365 

VII.      SHE  WOULD   TELL  ME           ...  370 


vi  Contents 

PAGE 

VIII.  THERE   IS  ONLY  ONE   REAL   FACT           .  377 

IX.  AUX   GRANDS   CCEURS    TOUT    EST    PETIT  386 

X.  AS    TO    THE   CAHIER  I    KNOW    NOTHING  39! 

XI.  THE   ETERNAL   HORACE        .            .            .  406 

XII.  WHY  DIDN'T  YOU  UNDERSTAND?        .  412 


HORACE  BLAKE 


HORACE  BLAKE 


I 

MIGHT   IT   BE   SUDDEN? 

IT  was  the  third  interviewer  that  had  called  in  the 
last  hour.  He  was  young,  eager,  reverential;  he 
wanted  to  talk  to  Mrs.  Blake  as  well  as  to  her  husband, 
to  gain  all  the  information  that  he  could  whether  it 
would  prove  good  copy  or  not.  James  Green  was  a 
genuine  worshipper  of  genius ;  unconsciously  he  always 
preferred  the  genius  that  was  in  the  fashion,  and  he 
was  borne  along  in  the  general  current  about  him, 
adding  little  to  it  but  the  impetus  of  his  own  vitality. 
Mrs.  Blake  liked  the  eager  eyes  that  glanced  at  her 
with  such  honest  friendliness;  she  did  not  mind  the 
wild  hair  or  the  trick  of  the  brown,  dusky  hand  that 
incessantly  pushed  back  the  mane  from  the  very 
ordinary  forehead.  Kate  Blake  did  not  mind  the 
flashy  clothes  or  the  neglect  the  young  man  had 
shown  as  to  his  own  person.  There  were  many 
things  in  the  world  that  she  did  not  take  the  trouble 
to  object  to,  and  many  more  that  she  did  not  notice 
at  all.  She  was  taller  than  this  boy  journalist — a 
large  woman,  not  quite  thin  though  inclined  to  be  so. 
James  Green  said  afterwards  that  she  had  been 
designed  on  the  large  lines  of  a  Sibyl  by  Michael 
Angelo;  he  seemed  to  think  that  Buonarotti,  as  he 

3 


4  Horace  BlaKe 

called  him,  had  suggested  the  type  to  Nature.  An 
old  blouse  and  a  skirt  of  a  past  fashion,  both,  however, 
very  well  put  on,  had  no  depressing  effect  upon  his 
view  of  Kate  Blake,  which  was  certainly  to  his  credit. 

As  he  came  in  she  was  standing  by  a  desk  on  which 
lay  a  mass  of  proofs  which  she  was  pinning  together, 
giving  each  chapter  a  brass  fastener  to  itself  with  a 
firm  pressure  of  the  large,  admirable  hands.  Green 
had  just  shut  the  door  of  the  room  in  which  he  had 
been  interviewing  her  husband,  and  she  looked  up  at 
him  with  a  grave,  friendly  expression. 

"It  was  good  of  you  to  let  me  see  him,  Mrs.  Blake," 
he  said,  "he  is  in  splendid  form;  can  he  be  always  as 
bright  as  this?" 

"  Not  always. "  Her  voice  was  not  musical,  but  it 
had  a  force  in  it  that  was  pleasant. 

"Then  I  am  fortunate." 

Mrs.  Blake  looked  at  a  mass  of  crumpled  papers  in 
his  hands.  "He  has  been  talking  to  you  a  good  deal, " 
she  said;  "was  it  about  the  last  play?" 

"No,  not  the  last  play,  though  he  was  amusing 
about  the  censor.  No,  Mrs.  Blake,  he  was  talking  to 
me  about  his  own  youth." 

"Ah, "said  Mrs.  Blake. 

"  He  has  been  letting  me  have  some  insight  into  the 
struggles  of  a  boy  genius  thrown  in  the  midst  of 
uncongenial  society,  narrow  as  the  eye  of  the  needle 
they  could  n't  pass  through.  Heavens!  Mrs.  Blake, 
think  of  that  boy  revolting  from  his  nursery  days 
against  the  credulity  of  creeds  and  the  frauds  of  faith 
— not  that  I  mean  he  would  make  use  of  cheap  alliter- 
ation. " 

For  at  the  "credulity  of  creeds"  he  thought  that 
Mrs.  Blake's  eyebrows  had  risen  a  little. 


Horace  BlaKe  5 

" Did  he  tell  you  more  of  his  family?" 

"His  father,"  said  the  boy,  consulting  one  of  the 
crumpled  papers,  "was  of  a  very  old  family,  very  much 
feared  and  respected,  altogether  a  terrible  character. " 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  followed  by  the 
appearance  of  a  tall  man  with  a  grave,  smooth  face 
and  a  fine  forehead. 

"Oh,  Sir  Thomas,  I  did  not  expect  you  this  morn- 
ing." Mrs.  Blake  turned  towards  him.  "This  is 
good  of  you.  I  'm  afraid,  Mr.  Green,  I  must  send 
you  away  as  Sir  Thomas  Goodstone  has  come  to  see 
my  husband,  but  you  shall  have  one  of  the  latest 
photographs  if  you  like." 

A  mass  of  photographs  of  all  sizes  and  shapes  lay  on 
the  table. 

"I  will  take  this  one,  please." 

The  young  journalist  decided  on  his  choice  at  a 
glance;  this  was  the  one  giving  the  true  presentation 
of  his  hero. 

Mrs.  Blake  led  him  to  the  door  and  Sir  Thomas 
Goodstone  took  up  one  of  the  photographs  and 
examined  it  with  a  grave,  professional  scrutiny. 

On  the  landing  Green  looked  back  at  Mrs.  Blake 
with  such  an  imploring  expression  that  she  followed 
him  out  of  the  room. 

"He  told  me  that  he  only  needed  a  few  weeks' 
complete  rest  to  set  him  up  again.  May  I  say  that 
that  is  Sir  Thomas  Goodstone's  opinion?" 

Mrs.  Blake's  face  did  not  change. 

"I  do  not  think  it  would  be  quite  etiquette;  you 
had  better  not  use  Sir  Thomas's  name  without  his 
permission." 

"  Might  I  just  come  back  and  ask  him  to  let  me  use 
his  name?" 


Mrs.  Blake  was  never  impatient  with  a  journalist, 
never  even  felt  tempted  to  be  impatient. 

"Not  just  at  this  moment,"  she  said  with  a  large 
maternal  manner  as  if  she  were  telling  a  dear  child 
to  run  away;  and  the  young  man  soon  found  himself 
passing  through  the  hall  of  the  hotel  into  Dover 
Street.  It  was  not  until  he  reached  the  office  of  the 
newspaper  that  he  became  aware  that  he  had  failed  to 
get  any  definite  information  as  to  Horace  Blake's 
state  of  health. 

Mrs.  Blake  went  into  the  sitting-room — once  a 
most  usual  hotel  sitting-room,  now  old-fashioned, 
with  its  heavy  mahogany  furniture  dark  against  a 
staring  white  and  gold  paper.  She  switched  on  the 
electric  light  as  the  fog  in  the  air  had  grown  thicker. 
The  great  doctor  turned  towards  her.  He  gave  a 
warning  glance  at  the  door  of  Horace  Blake's  bedroom. 

"Come  in  here,"  she  answered  in  a  low  voice,  and 
led  him  to  another  door  at  the  farther  side  of  the 
room.  They  went  into  a  small,  narrow  room  filled 
with  boxes  and  a  litter  of  things  just  unpacked,  and  of 
parcels  from  shops.  Sir  Thomas  kicked  against  a 
typewriter  that  was  standing  on  the  floor  and  jumped 
a  little  aside  to  avoid  it. 

"I  had  a  long  talk  with  your  husband  yesterday 
after  the  consultation,"  he  said.  He  knew  that  she 
had  waited  in  the  next  room  during  that  talk,  but  it 
was  the  easiest  way  to  begin. 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Blake. 

"  He  consented,  as  you  know, "  Sir  Thomas  went  on, 
"to  take  a  complete  rest;  he  suggests  the  coast  of 
Brittany.  It  is  a  fine  climate  and  an  easy  crossing, 
supposing  that  he  goes  from  Southampton  to  Cher- 
bourg by  the  North  German  Lloyd.  I  rather  insist 


Horace  BlaKe  7 

on  that  because  he  could  not  possibly  get  shaken  going 
that  way  in  one  of  the  finest  boats  in  the  world. " 

Mrs.  Blake  knew  that  he  knew  that  she  knew  all 
this  already.  She  was  more  inclined  to  be  impatient 
with  the  big  doctor  than  she  had  been  with  the  little 
journalist.  She  was  prepared  to  let  him  run  on  like 
this,  but  it  seemed  hard  now  to  make  her  ask  what  he 
knew  that  she  was  waiting  to  know. 

"Might  it  be  sudden?"  she  asked. 

"Extremely  unlikely."  She  had  put  it  in  the 
easiest  way  possible  for  him. 

"Will  there  be  much  pain?" 

"  It  will  be  intermittent;  acute  perhaps  at  times,  but 
not,  I  think,  constant. " 

The  courage  in  the  strong  face  touched  him;  there 
was  something  human  in  his  voice  as  he  said:  "You 
want  to  ask  me  how  long  it  may  be  delayed" — every- 
thing was  "it"  now  in  their  talk,  whether  pain  or 
disease  or  death — "and  I,  with  my  miserable  science, 
cannot  tell  you.  It  is  best  for  him  and  for  you  that 
you  don't  know. " 

"  Do  you  think  he  understood  himself? "  asked  Mrs. 
Blake. 

"  I  hope  not. "     The  manner  was  more  professional. 

She  did  not  trouble  to  tell  him  that  her  husband 
knew  the  truth  perfectly  well;  she  had  seen  it  in 
Horace's  eyes, — indeed  that  was  how  she  had  first 
known  it  herself. 

"I  want  you,"  said  Sir  Thomas,  "to  take  with  you 
the  best  man-nurse  I  know;  happily  he  is  just  dis- 
engaged. I  can  give  him  full  directions.  I  think," 
he  added  with  again  a  touch  of  human  sympathy, 
"  he  will  be  an  immense  comfort  to  you.  Shall  I 
send  him  round  for  you  to  see  him?  " 


8  Horace  BlaKe 

"Yes,  we  must  find  out  whether  Horace  takes  to 
him." 

"He  is  sure  to  do  that,"  said  Sir  Thomas  genially. 
"As  to  the  papers,  Mrs.  Blake,  you  pay  the  price  of 
fame ;  I  have  had  two  interviewers  to-day  and  I  think 
we  had  better  settle  what  to  say.  Your  husband 
is  overworked  and  needs  a  complete  rest — 'ordered 
by  Sir  Thomas  Goodstone  to  take  a  complete  rest 
for  some  months."  Did  he  stumble  at  the  word 
"months"? 

"Will  you  see  him  now?" 

"No,  no,  I  have  nothing  to  say;  don't  let  him  know 
I  have  been  here, "  and  he  moved  towards  the  sitting- 
room. 

Kate  Blake's  face  quivered  for  the  first  time  at  the 
astonishing  stupidity  of  the  man  who  was  ready  to 
again  risk  passing  through  the  sitting-room.  She 
opened  another  door  on  to  a  back  staircase.  Sir 
Thomas  looked  as  if  a  back  staircase  were  a  thing  he 
did  not  know  how  to  deal  with.  With  an  unconscious 
air  of  command  Kate  Blake  led  the  way  and  took 
him  down  to  the  level  of  the  hall  and  he  passed  through 
a  glass  door  that  opened  into  it. 

She  returned  up  the  front  stairs,  which  were  narrow 
and  dark,  for  the  hotel  was  old-fashioned  and  not 
arranged  for  display.  Its  central  position  made  it 
possible  for  it  to  go  on  unchanged  and  yet  still  to 
demand  and  get  high  prices. 

She  passed  through  the  long  narrow  sitting-room 
and  turned  into  the  badly  lighted  bedroom  at  the 
back  where  the  electric  light  had  been  necessary  all 
the  morning. 

In  the  middle  of  a  large  bed,  canopied  with  red 
curtains,  leaning  against  many  pillows,  was  the  long 


Horace   BlaKe  9 

thin  person  of  Horace  Blake,  his  body  making  sharp 
outlines  under  the  bed-clothes.  He  was  reading  a 
paper  and  gave  a  chuckle  as  she  came  near  him. 

''I  have  invented  for  myself  in  the  last  week  four 
different  fathers,  two  mothers,  and  three  religions  from 
which  I  revolted  in  childhood.  I  have  had  six  special 
hobbies,  four  favourite  games,  and  have  given  utter- 
ance to  at  least  a  dozen  contradictory  blasphemies — 
you  know  even  blasphemies  are  not  always  consist- 
ent. But  it  's  about  time  I  got  away,  eh?" 

She  did  not  make  the  mistake  of  being  unlike  her- 
self with  him.  "  It  's  no  use  playing  the  ass,  Horace." 

"But  if  it  amuses  me  to  play  the  ass?  However, 
I  've  done  it  enough  for  this  visit.  It  's  great  fun 
coming  to  London  just  when  you  are  being  boomed; 
the  house  was  fuller  than  ever  last  night.  Those 
journalistic  fellows  said  I  could  ask  anything  I  chose 
for  the  next  play.  I  have  n't  told  them  that  the 
second  act  is  practically  finished." 

"And  that  the  censor  will  never  let  it  appear, "  said 
Kate,  smiling. 

"Bring  me  the  photographs,  I  want  some  for 
America." 

She  brought  in  the  pile  of  many  sizes  and  threw 
them  on  the  bed  in  front  of  him. 

"They  are  not  at  all  like;  I  told  you  so  when  I  saw 
the  proofs,"  she  said  hastily.  She  thought  he  must 
see  in  them  how  terribly  he  was  changed. 

He  sat  up  and  pushed  back  the  curtain  and  let  the 
electric  light  fall  full  on  the  photographs.  His  silk 
pyjamas  fell  wide  open  at  the  neck  and  his  shrunken 
arms  came  far  out  of  the  sleeves. 

"Not  a  bad -looking  fellow,"  he  said,  and  chuckled 
again.  The  bed  was  strewn  with  papers,  caricatures, 


io  Horace  BlaKe 

photographs,  letters,  press  cuttings,  all  in  some  way 
dealing  with  himself.  He  might  have  grown  accus- 
tomed to  it  all  by  now,  but  he  had  not,  neither  had  she. 
Every  atom  of  flattery  for  him  was  as  fresh  to  them 
both  as  the  first  roses  of  summer,  and  this  was  the 
fullest  harvest  they  had  ever  gathered.  His  thin 
hands  caressed  all  that  lay  before  him. 

"I  suppose  there  are  some  attacks  you  have  not 
given  me, "  he  said  in  the  tone  of  a  spoilt  child. 

"Of  course,"  said  Kate  bitterly,  "the  fools  are  the 
same  as  usual,  even  more  so,  which  shows  that  you 
have  struck  home. " 

"What  will  they  say  when  the  next  comes,  eh, 
Kate?" 

"It  is  very  queer,"  said  Kate  hurriedly — she  could 
not  speak  of  the  future  just  then — "how  differently 
your  work  affects  different  people.  Here  is  a  religious 
paper,  which,  while  recognising  you  as  an  enemy,  is 
full  of  praise  for  the  art  of  your  work,  and  a  signed 
article  by  'L.  P.,'  who  does  n't  often  strain  at  a 
camel,  saying  that  you  are  positively  too  wicked  for 
the  likes  of  him." 

"That 's  nothing  new,"  said  Horace,  smiling. 

"I  know;  and  yet  after  every  play  I  am  surprised 
afresh.  How  can  you  make  the  religious  fools  you 
are  laughing  at  put  up  with  you  as  they  do?  " 

"Well,  you  see,  I  always  give  them  two  or  three 
characters  that  they  fall  in  love  with." 

"But  you  always  show  them  up  or  gibe  at  them." 

"The  other  characters  show  them  up  and  gibe  at 
them — I  don't  give  any  opinion." 

"But  what  you  think  is  plain  enough." 

"  Plain  enough  that  I  hate  shams  and  hypocrisy,  but 
each  sect  is  ready  to  think  I  mean  some  other  sect 


Horace  BlaKe  n 

that  they  happen  to  hate.  They  don't  know  me  as 
you  do."  He  gave  half  a  sigh  and  half  a  grunt  as  he 
spoke.  "And  also  you  don't  fall  under  the  glamour  of 
the  religious  characters.  You  see,  Kate,  you  don't 
understand  them;  how  should  you?  Don't  you  see 
that  if  I  had  not  been  religious  in  my  youth,  I  could 
never  have  brought  them  into  existence?"  He 
laughed.  "That's  what  I  gained  from  the  prayers 
I  learned  at  my  mother's  knee!" 

Kate  smiled  indulgently.  She  had  wanted  to  dis- 
tract him,  and  she  had  succeeded. 

"Just  the  spark  that  sets  me  aflame  when  I  write  of 
a  believer,  whereas  my  present  enlightened  condition" 
— he  smiled  sardonically — "plus  a  sense  of  humour, 
produces  the  other  characters ;  and  if  in  my  knowledge 
of  human  nature  I  insinuate  some  things  I  can't  say 
out,  the  good  folk  don't  read  between  the  lines.  It 's 
left  for  an  old  rake  like  the  author  of  that  article  to 
throw  stones  out  of  the  small  window  he  keeps  open 
in  his  glass  house.  Well,  in  the  next  play  I  have  let 
myself  go  and  spoken  out  plainly  enough.  I  want  it 
published  as  a  book,  and  then  the  world  can  judge 
between  me  and  the  censor.  Let  the  baby  of  cant 
and  false  modesty  have  its  cry  out;  after  that,  the 
thing  will  be  carried  through  by  its  sheer  force.  Now 
will  you  order  luncheon  and  some  champagne?  Old 
Goodstone  does  not  mind  champagne.  And  would 
you  turn  on  the  water  in  the  bath-room?  Oh,  yes; 
one  thing  more.  I  shall  want  a  motor  this  afternoon ; 
will  you  order  it?" 

Kate  watched  h'm  quietly  as  his  shrill  high  voice 
hurried  on ;  she  knew  he  was  afraid  of  what  she  might 
say.  The  haggard  face  was  turned  from  her ;  only  once 
she  saw  the  sharp  light  eyes  give  her  a  furtive  glance. 


12  Horace  BlaKe 

At  lunch  he  ate  little,  though  he  said  he  felt 
hungry,  and  she  thought  he  had  some  twinges  of 
pain;  he  hardly  touched  the  champagne.  In  the 
afternoon  he  went  out  in  the  motor ;  he  did  not  tell  her 
where  he  was  going.  "I  must  be  amused,"  he  had 
said  just  before  he  started.  She  did  not  see  him  again 
till  next  morning. 


II 

YOU    HAD    BETTER   STAY    IN    LONDON 

FURTHER  inquiry  discovered  the  fact  that  there 
would  be  a  North  German  Lloyd  boat  crossing 
on  the  following  Sunday.  It  would  have  been  hardly 
possible  to  get  Horace  off  on  the  Wednesday,  and  the 
man-nurse,  now  identified  as  Roberts,  was  anxious 
for  a  little  delay.  It  was  suddenly  realised  that  no 
one  was  in  a  desperate  hurry  and  the  week,  the  longest 
week  Kate  ever  spent  in  her  life,  went  on  crowded  and 
confused.  She  threw  herself  into  her  husband's 
mood;  indeed,  their  outlook  was  almost  the  same. 
There  was  nothing  to  be  done  that  could  make  any 
difference.  The  best  distraction,  the  best  way  of 
playing  the  game,  was  still  to  try  to  enjoy  the  things 
they  had  always  prized.  There  was  still  on  them  the 
contrast  of  the  poverty  and  obscurity  in  which  they 
had  spent  the  first  twelve  years  of  their  married  life. 
Even  now  the  contrast  gave  a  real  savour  to  the  feast 
offered  them.  They  had  had  a  hard  fight  and  they 
had  conquered. 

"A  little  different  from  what  it  used  to  be,  eh?" 
Horace  said  on  Tuesday  morning,  handing  her  a  heap 
of  notes.  "With  whom  shall  we  dine — the  Prime 
Minister,  the  Duchess,  or  our  actor-manager?" 

There  had  been  an  intermediate  time — the  thought 
was  in  both  their  minds — when  he  had  been  asked 
everywhere,  as  the  phrase  goes,  without  her.  But 
now  another  stage  had  been  reached;  people  liked  to 

13 


14  Horace  BlaKe 

say  they  knew  them  both ;  it  showed  more  intimacy 
with  him.  Each  note  was  almost  the  same;  each 
hostess  had  heard  that  the  Horace  Blakes  were  in 
London;  could  she  be  lucky  enough  to  catch  them? 

Horace  was  glad  to  have  so  easy  a  topic  with  which 
to  open  their  talk.  He  knew  that  Kate  would  not 
ask  him  where  he  had  been  the  night  before,  but  he 
was  always  glad  to  have  some  pleasant  topic  ready 
for  her  in  the  morning.  Then  he  had  something  else 
to  go  on  to;  something  not  easy  to  say,  something 
not  in  tune  with  the  comedy  or  tragedy  they  were 
playing  with  each  other,  but  something  he  was  deter- 
mined to  say. 

Kate  Blake  was  no  politician,  but  she  chose  the 
Prime  Minister's  dinner-party.  She  liked  the  dignity 
of  it ;  besides,  it  would  be  good  for  the  actor-manager 
that  they  should  dine  in  Downing  Street,  and  the 
habit  of  doing  what  was  most  useful  was  quite  formed 
by  now. 

"The  other  would  have  been  more  fun,  but  you  are 
quite  right,"  he  answered,  and  he  hesitated  whether 
to  leave  the  important  thing  he  had  to  say  till  the 
afternoon.  When  the  afternoon  came  he  decided 
to  leave  it  unsaid  till  next  day. 

That  night  was  his  last  appearance  in  the  world, 
and  they  both  enjoyed  it.  They  both — she  by  an 
early  experience  and  he  by  instinct — knew  what 
was  really  the  best  thing  in  human  society,  apart 
from  the  pinchbeck  and  the  morally  vulgar.  They 
suffered  gladly  anybody  who  appreciated  them,  but 
they  really  enjoyed  unaffected  intellectual  society.  It 
was  a  large  family  that  inhabited  10,  Downing  Street, 
at  that  moment — a  family  of  the  keenest  mental 
activity,  and  with  a  certain  measure  of  unworldliness 


Horace  BlaKe  15 

of  their  own.  To  them  on  the  whole  another  and  a 
future  world  really  mattered  more  than  this  one,  and 
tradition  and  position  made  certain  minor  faults 
unnatural  to  them. 

Kate  was  well,  if  severely,  dressed;  her  face  was  lit 
with  intelligence  and  softened  by  the  strain  under 
which  she  was  living.  She  might  to-night  be  taken  for 
a  real  live  woman,  and  the  simplicity  with  which  she 
enjoyed  being  talked  to  about  her  husband  added  to 
the  pleasant  feminine  impression.  At  one  moment 
of  the  evening  the  hostess  got  an  even  gentler  impres- 
sion of  her  guest.  The  man  who  had  been  talking 
to  Mrs.  Blake — a  distinguished  soldier — had  left  her 
for  a  moment  to  bring  a  friend  to  be  introduced  to  her. 
She  stood  well  as  she  walked  well;  and  as  she  stood 
alone,  absolutely  unconscious  of  herself,  her  eyes 
were  moist. 

At  that  moment  she  was  watching  Horace.  He  was 
obviously  being  made  much  of,  eagerly  listened  to, 
talking  well.  Talking  was  not  really  his  gift.  The 
group  were  at  a  little  distance  from  her.  It  came 
over  her  in  an  overpowering  wave  that  this  was  the 
last  time  she  would  see  him  thus.  She  had  brought 
him  there,  had  had  this  life's  job  in  hand,  to  nurture 
his  genius  and  make  the  world  bow  before  it.  She 
did  not  value  society,  the  actual  converse  with  any 
group  of  human  beings,  as  anything  compared  to  a 
big  widespread  fame  that  might  echo  through  the 
ages.  She  even  valued  sheer  newspaper  fame  above 
social  success.  She  valued  this  as  part  of  what  they 
had  won.  Now  it  had  come  to  an  end.  It  had  no- 
thing to  do  with  sickness  or  death.  She  did  not  think 
of  herself  apart  from  him  in  such  a  matter.  Society 
would  never  be  of  interest  to  her  if  he  were  not  there. 


16  Horace  BlaKe 

He  suddenly  looked  round  and  gave  her  a  glance,  and 
she  knew  that  he  was  in  pain,  and  moved  on  to  say 
"Good-night"  with  unconscious  dignity.  He  looked 
at  her  with  appreciation.  They  thought  chiefly  of 
each  other  as  they  went  away. 

"That  is  one  of  the  doors  that  would  be  shut  to  us 
if  I  published  this  last  play,"  he  said  irritably,  as  the 
taxi  moved  on. 

"  If  ?  "  exclaimed  Kate. 

"When,"  he  corrected.  "Ah!"  and  the  pain  had 
him  in  its  grip. 

He  passed  a  very  bad  night — one  of  the  worst  Kate 
had  yet  watched  him  through — the  most  restless  and 
miserable. 

Next  morning  there  was  much  the  same  mass  of 
things  on  his  bed  as  the  day  before,  only  more  notes 
and  telegrams  from  private  friends.  There  were  some 
magnificent  roses  in  a  jug  near  the  bed ;  the  room  was 
lighter  than  yesterday,  and  the  spring  sunshine 
made  some  way  into  the  little  back-yard,  and  was 
reflected  from  an  opposite  window.  Horace  only 
looked  the  more  haggard  and  feverish. 

"Surot  wants  to  paint  me.  Would  you  tell  him 
that  I  can't  give  him  any  sittings  until  I  come  back 
again?" 

"You  could  not  give  him  one  this  week?" 

It  was  in  both  their  minds  that  it  would  be  a 
valuable  thing — a  portrait  by  Surot — a  portrait  for 
futur  ty,  a  thing  not  to  be  missed.  But  they  were 
treading  on  thin  ice. 

"I  'm  afraid,"  said  Kate,  "he  will  be  away  all  the 
rest  of  the  year;  he  is  going  back  to  Hungary  in 
August." 


Horace  BlaKe  17 

He  knew  that  she  meant :  "  It  is  worth  while  to  make 
an  effort  for  this ;  this  picture  will  add  to  your  posthu- 
mous fame."  And  he  made  the  effort  to  risk  all  the 
thoughts  that  this  last  portrait  must  bring,  for  the 
sake  of  the  fame  they  had  worked  for  together.  He 
went  to  Surot's  studio,  and  had  a  bad  half -hour — 
some  physical  pain  and  much  mental  suffering — for 
he  saw  in  Surot's  eyes,  as  he  worked,  and  the  artist 
became  too  absorbed  to  have  any  disguises  in  his  face, 
that  he  knew  he  was  painting  a  man  under  sentence  of 
death. 

"It  must  be  very  interesting,"  he  thought  to  him- 
self. And  then  as  an  experiment  he  managed  to  catch 
Surot's  glance,  and  he  looked  at  him  very  straight  into 
his  eyes.  Surot  for  a  moment  was  too  absorbed  to 
notice;  after  that  he  blushed. 

"I/  suo  fato  un  segreto  d'altrui,"  said  Horace  in  a 
light  undertone,  but  Surot  apparently  did  not  know 
Italian.  Only  Horace  felt  he  had  scored  off  the  artist 
and  kept  him  in  order.  He  had  asserted  his  rights 
against  the  painter's  obsession  in  studying  his  physi- 
cal conditions. 

He  was  excessively  tired  when  he  got  back  to  the 
hotel.  Roberts — the  man-nurse  recommended  by 
Sir  Thomas — had  arrived.  He  suggested  that  Horace 
should  go  to  bed,  which  Kate  would  hardly  have  dared 
to  do.  Four  hours'  rest  before  he  dined  out  meant 
four  hours  without  distraction.  But  the  upright, 
vigorous  figure  standing  ready  to  help  him  seemed 
attractive.  Horace  leaned  on  his  arm  and  went  into 
the  bedroom.  Roberts  undressed  him  and  put  him 
to  bed  like  a  child.  Once,  unnoticed  by  them  both, 
Kate  stood  in  the  open  doorway,  and  for  a  few  mo- 
ments stayed  watching.  There  came  over  her  the 


i8  Horace  BlaKe 

perception  that  that  part  of  her  task  had  been  taken 
from  her.  It  had  been  part  of  what  she  had  under- 
taken— the  physical  care  of  him.  She  had  been  the 
stronger  and  had  not  felt  it  hard.  She  did  not  know 
if  she  minded  being  superseded  in  this  or  not ;  she  did 
not  question  herself,  she  simply  recognised  the  fact, 
and  with  her  left  hand  she  lightly  touched  the  muscles 
in  her  right  arm  that  had  lately  so  often  held  him  up 
when  he  was  in  pain.  Meanwhile  the  skilled  hands  of 
the  trained  nurse  had  given  him  a  new  sense  of  relief, 
and  he  began  talking  to  Roberts  in  a  more  cheerful 
voice.  Roberts  came  into  the  drawing-room  to  fetch 
him  some  tea,  and  it  seemed  strange  to  Kate  to  have 
even  so  little  a  thing  done  for  her.  About  six  o'clock 
the  man  reappeared. 

"  Mr.  Blake  would  like  to  see  you. " 

She  felt  it  to  be  a  state  visit  when  Roberts  held  the 
door  open  for  her. 

As  soon  as  they  were  alone  Kate  knew  that  something 
was  wrong.  Horace  was  going  to  tell  her  something 
fresh.  He  was  sitting  up  in  bed,  supported  by  pillows, 
evidently  more  easy  of  body.  But  there  was  a  flush 
on  the  wasted  cheeks,  and  there  was  an  expression  she 
knew  well  of  set  obstinacy  and  shamelessness  about 
the  mouth,  while  the  great  light  eyes  were  at  the  same 
moment  both  furtive  and  defiant.  Kate's  heart  sank, 
not  with  a  quick  strong  emotion,  but  with  the  dul- 
ness  of  experience.  What  had  he  done  now?  Had  he 
achieved,  broken  as  he  was,  some  fresh  iniquity? 
Would  there  even  now  be  the  usual  task  of  trying  to 
patch  up  some  scandal?  Whom  had  he  overreached 
in  money  matters?  Or  was  it  still  possible  that  he 
had  injured  some  woman  to  whom  Kate  must  make 
amends?  Always  she  had  followed  in  his  wake,  per- 


Horace   BlaKe  19 

suading  to  silence,  bribing  when  needful,  saving  him 
the  consequences  of  his  actions.  Her  heart  was  too 
old  and  dull  by  this  time  to  feel  what  it  used  to  feel; 
her  pulse  was  slow,  only  she  knew  she  would  go  on 
striving,  contriving,  making  the  patches  to  fill  the 
rents  of  the  worn  garment  of  his  reputation.  And  she 
had  kept  the  worn  garment  together  in  an  amazing 
way  until  now,  when  the  end  was  very  near. 

"  I  want  to  speak  to  you, "  he  said,  as  he  had  so  often 
said  it  before.  Kate  stood  expectant,  patient,  calm; 
he  knew  without  raising  his  eyes  what  she  looked  like, 
and  felt  afraid  of  her — afraid  of  the  unconscious  great- 
ness of  the  way  in  which  she  stood  expectant.  At  last 
he  went  on  in  a  shrill  voice: 

"I  was  thinking  about  your  plans,"  he  said. 
"  Don't  you  think  that  you  had  better  stay  in  London 
while  I  am  away?  It  would  be  less  dull  for  you  than 
going  home.  I  'm  afraid  I  must  leave  you  a  lot  to  do. 
I  shall  have  to  leave  the  two  first  acts  of  this  last  play 
entirely  in  your  hands  to  be  copied  and  revised,  and 
then  there  are  all  the  proofs  for  the  new  edition  of  my 
collected  works." 

He  might  just  as  well  have  repeated  over  and  over, 
"I  don't  want  you — I  don't  want  you,"  as  have  gone 
on  saying  the  other  things,  for  the  sense  of  that  "I 
don't  want  you"  was  what  rang  loudly  in  Kate's  ears. 
Several  ideas  were  presented  at  the  same  moment  to 
her  mind.  First,  that  from  experience  she  knew  what 
going  away  from  her  meant  in  the  past,  the  holidays 
he  took  that  left  a  trail  of  shame  and  trouble  behind 
them.  Then  there  was  the  horror  of  his  falling  en- 
tirely into  the  care  of  hirelings  who  might  get  tired  of 
him  and  his  suffering,  for  he  was  not  an  easy  patient; 
he  might  tire  out  the  strongest. 


2O  Horace    BlaKe 

Besides,  there  was  her  own  side  of  it,  her  awful 
failure  at  the  end  of  all  her  care.  He  did  not  want  her, 
and  that  was  the  great  failure.  Again,  the  world 
meant  most  to  her  for  him,  but  it  meant  something  for 
herself.  What  would  their  world  think  of  her  allow- 
ing him  to  go  away  to  die? 

"I  want  to  get  a  thorough  rest  out  there  as  soon  as 
I  have  written  one  act  more." 

She  thought  suddenly  that  she  understood.  The 
idea  of  some  new  scandal  faded.  No,  he  wanted  to  go 
away  from  her  because  while  he  was  with  her  he 
would  see  her  as  a  witness  to  the  truth  that  he  was 
dying.  If  he  went  away  with  Roberts,  there  would 
be  no  effort,  no  pretence,  nothing  but  rest  and  the 
possibility  of  deluding  himself,  perhaps  of  getting  to 
hope.  Roberts  seemed  to  exude  the  idea  that  only 
fear  was  unreasonable.  To  go  away  and  get  better, 
his  silence  seemed  to  insist,  was  the  only  reasonable 
view  of  the  matter. 

She  understood,  and  she  never  even  asked  herself 
if  she  forgave.  But  Blake  moved  uneasily.  He 
had  more  to  say  that  was  very  difficult  to  say  to 
Kate. 

"Would  you  give  me  the  novel  I  left  in  the  sitting- 
room,  and  a  paper-knife?" 

Kate  brought  the  book. 

"  How  about  Trix?"  Horace  asked  abruptly,  as  she 
came  near  the  bed.  She  had  been  wondering  if  he 
wanted  to  see  Trix  before  he  went  away,  but  Trix  had 
passed  to  a  great  distance  from  her  mind  during  the 
last  quarter  of  an  hour.  Trix  was  the  only  child,  now 
nearly  eighteen  years  old. 

"I  have  been  so  busy  I  have  not  written  to  her  for 
nearly  a  week. ' '  Kate  spoke  in  a  tone  of  self-reproach. 


Horace    BlaKe  21 

She  was  very  seldom  startled,  but  she  was  startled  by 
the  next  thing  Horace  said. 

"I  think  I  shall  take  her  abroad;  it  would  amuse 
her." 

A  hot  colour  spread  over  his  wife's  neck  and  face. 
Horace  looked  at  her  angrily.  They  agreed  about  so 
many  things,  and  they  had  agreed  tacitly  not  to  see 
much  of  Trix.  And  Kate  had  registered  a  vow  long 
years  ago  that  Trix  should  never  learn  to  know  what 
Horace  had  taught  to  her.  She  was  almost  over- 
whelmed at  last. 

"The  child  has  done  enough  lessons,"  grumbled 
Horace.  "She  would  enjoy  Brittany,  and  the 
air  would  do  her  good;  why  grudge  her  a  little 
amusement?"  And  at  the  same  moment  his 
eyes  held  a  very  storm  of  reproach  in  their  light 
depths. 

"Can  you  grudge  this  to  me  now?"  he  seemed  to 
say.  Meanwhile  the  full  horror  of  the  idea  swept  over 
Kate.  To  send  a  child  of  not  quite  eighteen,  knowing 
nothing  of  sickness,  to  be  with  him  in  agonies  of  pain, 
possibly  to  be  alone  with  him  and  a  man-hireling 
when  he  should  die.  Even  if  the  worst  did  not  happen, 
to  be  absolutely  alone  with  Horace,  the  Horace  she 
knew  in  his  worst  moods,  the  Horace  she  knew  when  he 
was  furiously  revolting,  when  his  whole  mind  seemed 
to  be  one  desperate  blasphemy,  when  he  showed  him- 
self what  the  majority  of  mankind  would  call  simply  a 
lost  soul.  She  looked  at  him,  the  wreck  on  the  bed, 
whose  genius  to  her  blazed  brighter  than  ever,  whose 
success  added  a  glory  to  his  strange,  intelligent, 
mysterious,  mocking  face,  and  then  she  thought  of  the 
child.  It  seemed  to  her  that  the  frantic  hatred 
against  all  the  powers  that  rule  the  destiny  of  man, 


22  Horace    BlaKe 

the  demonic  force  of  his  dramatic  work  was  turned 
for  the  moment  against  herself. 

"Kate,  if " 

"Take  her, "  was  the  low  answer;  and  then  came  a 
touch  of  submission.  "It  will  be  a  nice  change  for 
her."  The  banal  words  were  spoken,  and  Horace's 
eyes  lit  up  with  triumph. 

"Send  Roberts  to  me,"  he  said  imperiously.  Then 
he  checked  himself.  "Come  here" — he  held  out  the 
thin,  feverish  hand.  "I  11  not  teach  her  to  blaspheme 
and  1 11  not  teach  her  to  pray,  Kate;  and  1 11  be  as 
prudish  a  chaperon  as  any  finishing  governess." 

It  hurt  horribly  that  he  could  say  so  crude,  so 
horrid  a  thing  as  that.  His  face  lowered  at  the  way 
in  which  she  took  his  little  advance.  She  saw  it, 
and  pulling  herself  together  she  smiled  at  him.  "I 
will  have  her  up  to-morrow  to  get  some  really  good 
clothes." 

"Let  me  take  her  away  in  perfectly-cut  blue  serge, 
and  an  ideal  travelling-hat — spend  plenty  of  money, 
Kate,  the  royalties  are  crowding  in." 

Kate  rang  for  Roberts,  who  appeared  at  once,  and 
then  she  left  them  and  went  into  the  drawing-room. 
She  sat  down  by  the  fire  in  a  low  chair  and  held  out 
her  hands  to  the  blaze  which  had  been  unnecessary 
all  day,  and  which  now  could  not  send  her  any  warmth 
that  she  could  feel.  Then  with  a  gesture  of  despair 
she  covered  her  face  with  the  cold  fingers.  It  was  too 
much ;  she  thought  she  knew  all  she  could  suffer  before 
this,  and  she  was  startled  at  the  new  misery.  Horace 
left  her  and  took  Trix.  Trix,  whom  he  had  so  seldom 
wanted  to  see  at  all;  he  had  been  absolutely  careless 
of  Trix.  Trix  had  grown  up  with  Kate's  sister, 
Anne  Coniston,  because  Horace  and  Kate  had  agreed 


Horace    DlaKe  23 

that  it  was  best.  Now  she  must  write  to  Anne  and  say 
that  Trix  was  to  go  abroad  alone  with  Horace.  Kate 
had  for  a  long  time  thought  that  she  would  never 
feel  anything  with  the  quivering  pain  of  full  vitality 
again,  but  she  did  feel  it  now.  If  Horace  were  capable 
of  generosity,  of  common  gratitude,  he  could  not  have 
done  this.  There  were  so  many  reasons  why  it  was  an 
insult — a  special  insult  to  Kate.  She  almost  thought 
she  hated  him,  she  was  ready  to  hate  him.  Then 
faintly  but  unmistakably  came  the  sound  of  a  groan 
through  the  folding-doors.  She  sprang  up.  Horace 
was  in  pain  again ;  she  must  go  to  him.  How  could  she 
be  sure  that  the  hired  nurse  would  be  gentle  enough, 
would  care  enough?  She  moved  towards  the  door  and 
her  fingers  were  just  touching  the  handle  when 
Horace  laughed  a  loudish  chuckle.  Evidently  Roberts 
had  amused  his  patient.  She  turned  back;  a  terrible 
revolt  seized  upon  her,  a  hatred  of  the  whole  world, 
of  the  great  dumb,  relentless  powers.  Her  father  had 
schooled  her  into  an  open-eyed  submission  to  the 
dimly  discerned  powers  that  rule  the  universe,  but 
to-night  that  submission  was  impossible.  She  sat  down 
again  with  eyes  that  did  not  see  fixed  on  the  wall 
opposite  to  her  with  its  ugly  white-and-gold  paper. 
She  saw  the  pattern  for  days  afterwards  with  tiring 
distinctness  when  she  shut  her  eyes,  though  she  did  not 
notice  it  at  the  time. 

Then  Kate  began  to  realise  that  she  had  been 
making  an  ideal  of  Horace's  last  weeks  upon  earth. 
She  had  pictured  to  herself  a  wholly  dignified  close  to 
that  stormy  existence.  The  doctors  had  said  that  the 
latter  part  of  the  mysterious  illness  which  they  could 
but  half  diagnose  would  very  likely  be  without  acute 
pain.  Horace  had  always  been  dependent  on  her  for 


24  Horace    BlaKe 

sympathy  and  encouragement  in  his  work;  and  latterly 
he  had  been  dependent  on  her  for  all  his  needs.  She  had 
foreseen  weeks  of  peace,  however  sorrowful — weeks 
in  which  honour  and  fame  would  be  his;  and  honour 
could  not  have  been  his  if  she  had  not  hidden  much 
from  the  world.  But  he  had  always  been  unaccount- 
able; the  unexpected  was  the  only  thing  to  expect 
from  him,  and  it  would  be  so  to  the  end.  Surely  it 
seemed  natural  that  he  should  cling  to  her  now  if  ever, 
and  yet  now  he  turned  away.  His  daughter  was  just 
old  enough  to  amuse  him,  to  give  him  some  distraction. 
Kate  could  never  distract  him  as  well. 

But  could  she,  ought  she  to  yield  to  him?  She  had 
a  will  strong  enough  to  get  her  own  way.  She  could 
insist  on  going  with  him,  on  nursing  him,  caring  for 
him  to  the  end.  No  doubt  he  would  submit ;  and  then 
she  felt  the  thing  to  be  too  dangerous.  Something 
bigger  than  she  could  put  into  words  warned  her  not 
to  force  her  power.  She  knew  he  was  not  as  other 
men ;  the  old  habit  of  telling  herself  that  he  could  not 
be  like  ordinary  men  reasserted  itself.  The  larger 
policy  of  submitting  to  this  horror  came  at  first 
vaguely,  then  clearly  to  seem  the  better  thing.  She 
grew  calmer;  now  she  saw  consciously  the  rug,  the 
shining  ormolu  grate  and  fire-irons,  and  she  noticed 
that  the  cat  was  lying  near  her  feet.  The  flowers  and 
the  round,  beautifully-marked  back  of  the  cat  soothed 
her.  Everything  else  was  almost  painful.  She 
leaned  back ;  the  habits  of  nearly  twenty  years  had  left 
a  physical  impress  on  her  brain,  and  her  thought  began 
to  move  in  its  accustomed  channels.  She  told  herself 
for  the  thousandth  time  that  if  Horace  was  a  bad  man 
he  was  also  a  very  great  one.  To  his  genius  he  had 
been  true.  He  had  promised  her  to  succeed  and  he 


Horace    BlaKe  25 

had  succeeded.  The  obsession  of  her  life  had  been  his 
genius,  his  success.  She  had  had  great  compensations. 
She  would  infinitely  rather  have  had  all  the  suffering 
he  had  given  her  than  have  been  cooped  up  as  the  wife 
of  some  little  insignificant  good  man.  Without  her 
Horace  would  never  have  given  what  he  had  given  to 
the  world.  She,  too,  was  responsible  for  having 
enriched  the  thought  of  mankind,  for  having  brought 
to  perfection  one  of  the  glories  of  the  human  race.  In 
her  agitation  the  unspoken  depths  of  her  life  found 
vent,  and  summed  it  all  up  in  words.  The  exhausted 
mind  became  calmer,  and  then  came  the  softening  of 
the  heart.  Horace  was  dying;  the  dying  may  be 
more  irresponsible  than  the  looker-on  can  see.  The 
most  loving  turn  from  their  best  beloved  in  certain 
states  of  disease.  Would  she  be  harsh ;  would  she  fail 
to  understand  now?  The  larger  way  of  the  greater 
affections  was  swallowing  up  the  agony  of  personal 
pain. 

She  rose,  and  quietly  wrote  to  her  sister  to  send 
Trix  up  to  them  next  day,  to  prepare  for  going  abroad. 
She  had  just  then  the  selfless  look  of  a  mother  who  has 
determined  that  a  suffering  child  must  have  its  way 
as  being  the  lesser  danger  in  his  condition.  She 
moved  gently,  and  there  was  a  certain  peace  in  the 
great  anguish  of  her  face.  In  cases  of  delirium  the 
patient's  muscles  are  capable  of  stronger  action  than 
in  a  state  of  full  consciousness.  So  with  Kate  the 
sudden  shock  of  Horace 's  announcement  had  produced 
a  state  in  which  her  capacity  for  suffering  was  much 
above  its  normal  condition.  When  she  returned  to  her 
usual  state  of  self-control,  the  pain  was  dulled,  the 
actual  vitality  was  lower.  „  Horace's  wife  was  a  much 
older  woman  than  her  years  warranted. 


Ill 

THEY   ARE   SUCH   STRANGE   EYES 

KATE  turned  away  as  the  train  passed  out  of  sight. 
There  had  been  one  less  wave  of  Horace's 
grey  felt  hat  than  she  expected,  and  now  she  could 
see  no  more  on  account  of  the  curve  of  the  line. 
The  smile  on  her  lips  had  been  obliged  to  stay  so  long 
that  it  seemed  to  have  become  settled.  With  the 
habit  begotten  of  long  poverty  she  began  to  think 
how  to  get  back  by  any  way  except  that  of  taking  a 
taxi.  Then  she  remembered  that  it  did  not  matter. 
There  was  enough  money  now  for  as  long  as  he  should 
need  it.  She  took  her  taxi  and  told  the  man  to  go  to 
Caxton  House,  where  she  had  business,  but  she  had 
mistaken  her  strength.  She  had  not  the  self-control 
to  do  business  quite  at  once.  After  paying  the  driver 
of  the  taxi  she  walked  very  slowly  on  and  made  her 
way  to  St.  James's  Park.  There  were  green  grass, 
quiet,  and  a  soft  breeze.  She  sat  down  on  a  bench 
and  leant  her  elbow  on  her  knees.  No  one  was  pass- 
ing and  she  was  able  to  cry.  Through  all  those  long 
years  they  had  seemed  really  necessary  to  each  other. 
Though  she  had  had  very  much  to  forgive,  she  had 
known  that  she  would  forgive  much  more,  not  by  any 
reason  or  virtue  apparent  to  herself,  but  because  he 
was  entirely  the  occupation  and  interest  of  her  life. 
Now  it  was  over  and  incredibly  enough  he  was  still 
alive.  A  hireling  could  nurse  h  m,  a  child  could  be  a 
better  companion  to  him.  The  great  doctor  had  been 

26 


Horace    BlaKe  27 

amazed  at  her  not  going  with  her  husband — amazed 
and  shocked.  Long  after,  when  he  came  to  know 
something  of  Horace  Blake's  married  life,  he  thought 
he  understood,  but  he  was  wrong.  It  was  not  that 
Kate  would  not  have  nursed  Horace  for  many  years, 
for  as  long  as  life  remained  in  him,  but  it  was  that 
Horace  had  come  to  feel  that  he  could  not  bear  to  have 
her  near  him.  Kate,  without  putting  it  into  words, 
had  understood  him  better  than  he  understood  himself. 
Horace  was  deadly  tired  and  his  wife  represented  to 
him  the  fearful  energy  with  which  they  had  worked 
together.  It  was  she  who  had  cut  him  off  from  his 
own  natural  surroundings  and  from  his  first  friends, 
and  now  he  hankered  after  something  different,  he 
did  not  quite  know  what.  At  moments  he  said  to 
himself  that  he  must  rest,  and  that  she  would  never 
let  him  rest;  at  other  moments  he  thought  that  it 
was  because  he  wanted  companionship  that  would  be 
fresh  and  young,  he  felt  that  he  wanted  to  be  a  boy 
again,  and  he  could  not  be  young  if  that  worn,  anxious 
face  were  watching  him  with  infinite  pity  and  fore- 
knowledge of  the  end.  Yet  Horace  at  last  was 
astonished  that  Kate  did  not  insist  on  coming  with 
him;  a  little  bitter,  unfair  thought  had  come  into 
his  mind  and  been  dismissed.  "  There  is  nothing  more 
to  be  got  out  of  me  and  she  knows  it. "  Then  he  was 
ashamed,  and  her  brave  smile  as  she  stood  on  the 
platform  during  those  last  moments  together  had 
touched  him  acutely.  Even  then  he  felt  urgently  that 
he  must  go  away  without  her,  that  he  could  not  bear 
her  to  come  too.  Probably  this  was  due  in  part  to 
some  effect  of  the  disease,  it  seemed  to  be  beyond  his 
control. 

Kate  let  herself  cry,  knowing  it  was  better  so,  for 


28.  Horace    BlaKe 

when  the  capacity  for  tears  had  quite  gone  the  pain  of 
thought  would  be  far  worse.  She  was  surprised  to 
find  that  she  could  cry.  She  had  not  cried  for  so 
many  years.  Her  wet  fingers  felt  strange,  and  the 
salt,  damp  smell  of  the  tears.  She  saw  his  face  full 
of  light  filled  with  pleasure  at  getting  away,  at  the 
brightness  of  the  morning,  at  the  intense  excitement 
in  Trix's  face.  But  a  few  minutes  before  he  left,  his 
eyes  had  met  hers  and  a  look  she  could  not  read  had 
come  into  them,  something  gentle,  tender,  haunting. 
His  eyes  had  always  had  so  much  power  over  her. 
"They  are  such  strange  eyes,"  she  thought,  "they 
hold  so  much  light. "  She  was  trying  to  imprint  the 
face  on  her  memory,  the  face  that  she  might,  perhaps, 
not  see  again.  She  did  not  think  for  one  moment 
of  the  possibility  of  a  future  life,  even  to  discard  it ; 
neither  was  she  now  in  revolt  at  her  destiny — she 
took  it  all  without  much  analysis  or  self-pity.  Her 
pain,  after  the  one  outbreak  of  nearly  a  week  ago, 
had  been  a  dull  one,  almost  a  half -awake  pain, 
and  yet  none  the  less  heavy  or  infinitely  weari- 
some. She  did  not  mean  to  dwell  upon  her  pain — 
to  be  weak  or  morbid  about  it.  In  her  scheme 
of  life  suffering  had  no  ritual,  no  observances.  She 
and  Horace  had  once  been  amused  when  Trix 
as  a  small  child  asked  them:  "What  is  the  use 
of  mental  pain?"  The  use!  How  could  there  be 
any  use  in  it?  She  meant  now  to  be  busy;  she 
would,  as  he  wished,  stay  on  in  London.  She 
would  correct  the  new  edition  of  his  novels  and 
essays.  She  would  type  the  latest  thing  he  had 
done — the  two  first  acts  of  the  unfinished  play;  she 
would  see  people;  she  would  do  all  the  things  that 
were  useful.  Even  if  he  were  to  die  now  his  mind 


Horace    BlaKe  29 

would  be  left  in  his  works,  and  she  would  live  to 
see  his  fame  grow  greater  and  greater.  The  thought 
strengthened  her,  the  thought  of  his  fame ;  it  was  her 
ideal  and  her  idol. 


IV 

THIS  WILL  DO   ME   GOOD 

HORACE  BLAKE  and  Trix  were  nearing  South- 
ampton. 

"Is  my  hat  straight,  father?" 

"No,  by  no  means;  yes,  now  that  is  better.  You 
look  almost  worthy  to  travel  with  Roberts. " 

"He  is  very  smart,  and  he  has  a  nice  face. " 

It  was  tacitly  understood  that  Roberts  was  to  be 
considered  simply  as  a  valet. 

Trix  was  tall  and  very  fair,  with  dark  brown  eyes. 
The  contrast  between  her  hair  and  her  eyes  was  very 
attractive.  She  was  dressed  as  well  as  could  be  done 
when  clothes  had  to  be  got  ready  in  three  days.  She 
had  no  experience  in  putting  her  things  on  really 
well,  but  she  had  instinct  and  grace.  Her  father  was 
delighted  with  his  travelling  companion.  After  that 
moment  of  deep  feeling  when  his  eyes  met  Kate's,  he 
had  almost  at  once  felt  the  relief  he  had  expected  in 
being  without  her.  She  was  the  visible  embodiment 
of  anxious  foreboding,  of  stern  conscious  strength  in 
darkness.  With  Trix  he  could  play  that  none  of  it 
had  happened  or  was  happening,  while  the  pro- 
fessional cheerfulness  of  Roberts  need  not  be  analysed. 

Horace  was  feeling  very  well.  Even  if  he  had  been 
told  the  truth  he  could  have  disbelieved  it  that 
morning;  and  as  he  had  not  heard  it  in  words — only 
read  it  distinctly  in  the  faces  about  him — he  could 
really  put  it  from  him.  He  had  not  been  abroad  for 

30 


Horace    BlaKe  31 

three  years,  and  the  passage  from  Southampton  to 
Cherbourg  was  new  to  him.  The  sea  breeze  was 
glorious  without  being  too  cold.  The  little  tender, 
heavily  loaded,  a  clumsy  little  affair,  put  out  into  the 
Solent.  Horace  was  fascinated  by  the  shipping, 
intoxicated  by  the  lightness  in  the  air.  Roberts 
firmly  held  out  his  fur  coat,  and  he  got  into  it,  too 
happy  to  grumble.  They  had  to  go  farther  than  they 
expected,  and  chose  every  big  boat  in  the  distance  as 
the  one  they  were  aiming  at,  until  at  last  something 
bigger  still  came  in  sight.  Trix,  who  had  slipped  off  to 
the  side  of  the  boat,  came  back  smiling. 

"That  man  was  telling  his  wife  that  Horace  Blake 
was  believed  to  be  on  board,  and  she  said  she  must  see 
you,  father."  Her  eyes  danced  with  pleasure  for  a 
moment. 

Then  they  began  to  realise  the  vast  and  monstrous 
object  they  were  approaching — storey  above  storey 
the  mighty  thing  stood  over  them.  Trix  caught  her 
breath  at  the  sudden  sensation  given  by  the  impression 
of  huge  size.  Its  population  of  men  and  women  had 
crowded  to  the  sides  and  were  looking  down,  and 
German  was  heard  in  a  confused  murmur. 

"They  are  going  from  Bremen  to  America,"  said 
Horace. 

Trix  felt  awestruck  at  this  thought  of  the  crowd  of 
men,  women,  and  children  in  some  crisis  of  their  lives, 
coming  from — to  her — the  unknown,  and  going  to 
another  unknown  land  beyond.  The  little  English 
girl  seemed  almost  irritated  that  this  huge  affair  had 
nothing  to  do  with  England.  Of  the  few  that  went 
on  board  with  them,  not  half  a  dozen  were  English. 
This  triumph  of  progress  was  German  and  its  object- 
ive was  America.  A  crowd  of  men  in  uniform  received 


32  Horace    BlaKe 

them  on  the  ship,  and  then  they  were  told  to  stand 
aside.  Immediately,  with  amazing  order  and  rapidity, 
strong  men  brought  on  board  a  perfect  cargo  of  pro- 
visions, from  fish  and  greens  to  hot-house  grapes.  The 
luggage,  the  mails,  the  stores  were  brought  on  and  dis- 
posed of  with  an  organisation  worthy  of  a  Kitchener. 

"Very  good  order, "  said  Roberts  unwillingly. 

The  ship  started,  and  Trix  and  her  father  stood  on 
the  highest  deck  and  watched  the  Isle  of  Wight 
until  they  had  passed  The  Needles.  Then  the  huge 
monster  stopped,  and  the  crowd  ran  again  to  the  side 
and  talked  eagerly  in  German. 

"Come  and  see  the  pilot  leave  the  ship,"  said  her 
father. 

"So  this  huge  thing  can't  get  through  the  Solent 
without  that  little  Englishman, "  cried  Trix. 

That  old,  eternal  pathos  of  the  pilot  leaving  the  ship 
caught  Horace's  imagination.  So  many  ships  in  life, 
in  human  affairs,  had  to  drop  their  pilots  and  go  out 
into  the  vast  deep.  The  hundreds  of  passengers  who 
crowded  to  look  at  him  seemed  to  feel  a  touch  of  awe. 
Then  the  great  monster  roused  itself  from  its  stillness, 
and  many  bells  rang  to  announce  food.  It  was  a  vigor- 
ous, badly-dressed,  joyous  crowd  of  strong  men  and 
women  and  noisy  children. 

"The  coming  race,"  said  Horace.  "Vigorous, 
cheerful,  affectionate,  not  self-conscious,  not  anxious 
to  know  if  their  hats  are  straight.  Once  upon  a 
time  the  English  were  like  that.  Look  at  those 
women." 

Two  girls  with  bright  handkerchiefs  tied  round 
their  hair,  with  badly-made  blouses,  with  shiny  belts 
and  full,  clumsy  skirts  were  walking  between  two  men, 
square  and  large-faced.  They  were  talking  and  laugh- 


Horace    BlaKe  33 

ing,  evidently  sure  of  an  unfastidious  admiration  from 
the  men. 

"Extraordinarily  vigorous,"  Horace  went  on. 
He  was  teasing  Trix;  she  was  ready  to  flare  up. 

"Not  a  suffragette  among  them,  you  bet;  they  all 
have  the  look  of  women  who  have  just  scrubbed  the 
floor  and  are  hungry  for  sausages.  Those  are  the 
people  who  will  oust  us  from  the  first  rank  among 
the  nations." 

"Father,  you  are  horrid,  and  it  's  only  these  second- 
class  shop  people  who  look  like  that.  Come  and  see 
the  people  in  the  steerage."  She  made  him  walk  to 
the  other  end,  and  then  he  looked  with  astonishment 
at  the  crowd  below  them.  A  seething  mass  of  black- 
eyed,  black-haired  men  and  women  and  children, 
making  a  great  noise,  moving  constantly,  and  at 
every  movement  dropping  orange-peel  or  hair-pins  or 
paper-bags,  while  tall,  fair,  smart  sailors  incessantly 
swept  up  the  refuse  with  long  sweeps  of  their  brooms. 

"Those,"  said  Horace,  "my  dear,  are  the  exiles  of 
the  world;  they  are  Jews.  The  conquering  race  does 
not  love  them  at  all." 

Then  they  went  up  again  to  the  first-class  deck 
and  lay  back  on  the  long  chairs.  Horace  sniffed  the 
glorious  air  and  put  his  thin  hands  on  the  rug  over  his 
knees  to  feel  the  warmth  of  the  sun,  and  presently  he 
fell  asleep.  Trix's  fascinated  gaze  was  fixed  upon  the 
crowd  of  white  birds  and  their  endless  activity;  it 
was  impossible  to  imagine  anything  more  exquisite, 
she  thought.  Presently,  looking  round,  she  saw  that 
her  father  was  asleep.  The  glory,  the  intoxication  of 
the  sea  and  the  white  birds  and  the  blue  sky  had  hold 
of  her.  That  is  one  of  the  greatest  moments  of  life, 
when,  after  a  monotonous  routine  of  daily  lessons, 


34  Horace    Blahe 

during  which  the  world  seems  cramped  about  our 
youth,  it  is  suddenly  allowed  a  vast  horizon.  Trix's 
youth  had  been  quiet  almost  to  severity,  and  only 
such  know  the  huge  joy  of  the  first  vision  of  a  larger 
life.  She  had  little  beyond  the  sense  that  her  father 
was  taking  her  for  this  wonderful  holiday,  that  he 
needed  a  holiday  and  they  were  to  make  holiday  to- 
gether. A  motherly-faced  young  German  pressed  her 
sister's  arm  as  they  passed  the  two  chairs.  Horace's 
face  was  terrible  in  his  sleep ;  the  child's  was  as  brilliant 
as  the  white  birds  and  the  blue  sky.  The  two  young 
women  shook  their  heads  and  their  kindly  eyes  met 
with  a  look  of  sympathy  and  pity. 

When  Horace  woke  he  shivered.  Roberts,  who  had 
not  been  far  off,  brought  him  some  hot  tea.  His  face 
brightened  and  he  drew  in  a  deep  breath. 

"This  will  do  me  good,"  he  said.  "I  've  half  a 
mind  to  go  on  to  America. " 


V 
SURELY  i  CAN'T  HAVE  FORGOTTEN  IT? 

THE  sacristan's  house  at  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  joined 
the  church,  sticking  out  from  it  at  an  obtuse 
angle.  Between  the  outer  walls  of  the  south  transept 
and  the  chancel  there  was  a  little  corner  of  garden, 
having  the  sacristan's  house  as  a  third  side  to  it. 
Here  grew  a  few  flowering  shrubs,  and  white  irises,  and 
some  red  roses  which  flourished  and  received  little  at- 
tention, yet  the  corner  was  not  wild  or  weedy.  It  did 
not  receive  enough  rain  under  those  old  walls,  nor  was 
it  given  enough  manure,  to  be  prolific  of  weeds.  The 
walls  of  the  church  were  stern  and  grey  and  weather- 
beaten,  almost  the  colour  of  the  rocks  on  the  coast, 
rocks  that  knew  what  the  sea  could  be  in  her  very 
worst  moods.  The  limits  of  the  little  garden  were 
shaped  by  the  straight  wall  of  the  transept,  and  the 
bold,  round  wall  of  the  chancel  and  the  uncertain, 
rough,  uneven  wall  of  the  sacristan's  house. 

Looking  in  at  the  sacristan's  house — the  door  was 
always  open — you  saw  the  rough,  earthen  floor,  the 
oak  table  and  strong  chairs,  and  across  the  corner, 
filling  up  a  large  space,  a  splendidly-polished  cupboard 
with  shining  brass  fittings.  The  bed  (almost  a 
coffin-bed)  in  the  living-room  recalled  Scotland;  the 
wardrobe  was  intensely  Breton.  The  sacristan  said 
that  she  had  once  been  two  sisters,  now  she  was  only 
one.  She  said,  "It  made  a  great  emptiness  in  the 

evenings,  but  if  it  was  the  good  God's  will? " 

35 


36  Horace    BlaKe 

The  day  began  with  Mass  at  five  o'clock,  for  which 
she  lit  the  candles,  made  the  responses  and  rang  the 
bell.  At  seven  o'clock  there  was  often  a  Requiem, 
sometimes  a  wedding,  and  occasionally  there  was  a 
Requiem  as  late  as  eight  o'clock.  But  usually  towards 
eight  o'clock,  the  late,  lazy  hour,  the  day  became  less 
interesting,  and  there  was  hardly  anybody  to  be  found 
in  church.  That  was  the  time  at  which  she  took  her 
coffee  and  a  piece  of  bread.  The  sacristan's  face  was 
narrow  and  thin;  the  eyes  and  mouth  were  sweet,  but 
the  nose  sharp.  There  was  nothing  of  the  pietist 
about  the  sacristan,  no  thin,  sour  wine  of  affectation, 
but  there  was  a  bit  of  French  human  nature  in  the 
imperiousness  of  her  official  attitude.  She  tapped  you 
sharply  on  the  shoulder  when  she  wanted  one  sou  for 
a  chair,  or  two  sous  for  two  chairs,  one  to  kneel  and  one 
to  sit  on.  She  looked  at  a  half-franc  given  for  change 
suspiciously;  and  she  gave  to  those  beneath  her — two 
strong  women  who  pulled  the  heavy  ropes  that  made 
the  bells  ring — small  sums  in  a  haughty  manner. 

She  made  great  distinctions  between  those  above 
her.  M.  le  Cure  was  supremely  first;  then,  a  very 
long  way  below  him,  M.  le  Vicaire,  and  then  at  a  far 
less  distance,  M.  le  Sous- Vicaire,  who  was  a  polished 
preacher.  But  then  there  were  also  the  priests  of  the 
retraite,  for  at  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  there  was  a  fairly 
large  presbytery,  and  sometimes  one  or  two  priests, 
who  had  been  chaplains  to  exiled  convents,  or  were 
too  old  to  work,  lived  with  M.  le  Cure"  on  their 
very  meagre  retiring  pensions.  The  sacristan  held 
them  all  in  contempt.  They  were  no  good  to  M.  le 
Cure.  They  ate  more  than  they  paid ;  to  her  thinking 
they  only  cumbered  the  ground  and  gave  trouble  to  all 
concerned.  The  sacristan  was  haughty  to  those 


Horace   BlaKe  37 

old  men,  hustling  them,  for  some  plea  of  dusting,  out 
of  the  prie-dieu  chairs  she  thought  they  preferred. 

"Tiens!  he  looks  well-fed  at  the  expense  of  M.  le 
Cure", "  she  would  say  to  herself  (she  was  too  prudent 
to  say  such  things  to  anybody  but  herself)  of  a  fat 
one;  or,  "  His  nose  is  red  enough  from  the  good  wine  of 
M.  le  Cure, " — of  a  thin  one. 

But  there  was  one  just  now  living  in  the  presbytery 
whom  she  particularly  disliked.  She  always  spoke  of 
him  as  "le  tout  petit11  in  tones  of  withering  scorn. 
"Le  tout  petit11  was  white-haired,  neat,  with  a  vague, 
lost  look  in  his  eyes.  There  seemed  to  be  nothing 
spiritual  in  the  face  of  "le  tout  petit. "  He  had  a  way 
that  exasperated  the  sacristan  of  looking  curiously  at 
the  congregation  when  he  said  "Dominus  vobiscum,11 
and  for  the  culmination  of  what  should  not  be  done 
after  Mass,  he  would  take  up  the  Chalice  and  begin 
saying  "Ave  Maria11  as  he  turned  away  from  the 
altar,  again  looking  at  the  congregation  as  he  slowly 
descended  the  altar-steps.  Indeed,  he  was  not  on  his 
knees  in  the  proper  place  for  saying  the  first  Ave 
Maria  until  he  had  got  to  the  second.  Happily  he 
said  the  eight  o'clock  Mass,  so  she  did  not  often  see 
him  do  these  things.  Then  "le  tout  petit11  did  nothing 
all  day  but  wander  about  aimlessly,  with  the  air  of  one 
who  could  not  take  the  trouble  to  look  at  the  people 
he  met,  although  he  looked  at  them  in  that  odd, 
inquisitive  way  from  the  sanctuary. 

Seeing  him  wander  by  while  she  was  beating  and 
shaking  her  feather  bed,  or  chopping  her  wood,  or 
fetching  pails  of  water  annoyed  her  excessively.  He 
never  knew  what  was  happening;  he  was  just  the  same 
as  usual  on  the  day  on  which  the  fishermen  went  down 
to  St.  Malo  to  start  for  Newfoundland  or  Iceland; 


38  Horace    BlaKe 

while  anybody  else  would  be  wondering  how  many 
of  them  would  ever  hear  the  cloches  de  chez  nous  again 
except  in  dreams.  He  would  ask  for  whom  was  a 
requiem  being  sung,  when  everyone  else  knew  every 
detail  of  the  last  illness  of  the  good  soul  who  had 
passed  away.  The  only  thing  that  really  troubled 
him  was  to  lose  his  breviary.  "He  does  n't  pay  too 
much  attention  when  he  is  reading  it,"  she  thought. 
He  had  a  trick  of  losing  his  breviary,  and  more  than 
once  she  had  kept  it  h  dden  from  him  for  a  couple  of 
hours  just  to  make  him  more  careful.  It  was  madden- 
ing the  way  in  which  he  would  wander  up  to  her 
door,  and  demand  in  his  grand  manner  if  the  sacristan 
had  seen  his  book  in  the  church.  There  was  a  dim, 
vague  air  of  authority  about  his  way  of  asking  for  it. 
She  supposed  he  had  caught  that  way  when  he  was 
M.  le  Cure  himself,  but  he  might  have  learned  to  drop 
it  by  now.  The  sacristan  was  greatly  troubled  at 
times  about  all  this.  She  went  to  confession  to  the 
sous-vicaire,  and  he  was  not  happy  about  it;  he  made 
her  understand  that  such  feelings  grow  upon  anybody 
if  not  checked.  M.  le  Cure  was  the  favourite  con- 
fessor for  all  classes,  but  it  went  against  her  sense  of 
their  official  relations  to  confess  to  him ;  it  was  hardly 
customary.  M.  le  Vicaire  was  everybody's  friend, 
was  about  everywhere,  knew  everything  that  was 
going  on,  heard  six  versions  at  least  of  every  story. 
He  knew  one's  sins  before  one  got  into  the  confessional. 
He  lost  his  temper  with  people  who  behaved  badly, 
and  then  made  up  again  with  great  big  shakes  of  the 
hand.  He  was  a  jolly  fellow,  and  sang  songs,  and 
was  good  like  a  piece  of  bread.  On  the  whole,  she 
preferred  as  a  confessor,  though  not  as  a  friend,  the 
more  conventional  sous-vicaire,  whose  sermons  were 


Horace    DlaKe  39 

polished,  though  they  had  not  the  rather  wild  elo- 
quence that  the  vicaire  indulged  in  at  times,  for  that 
good  comrade  the  vicaire  was  a  poet  and  a  friend  of 
Theodore  Botrel. 

The  vicaire  loved  all  the  lore  and  the  poetry  of  the 
wild  richly-coloured  coast.  He  gloried  in  such  words 
as  "The  sea  hath  lifted  up  her  voice";  he  knew  what 
the  voice  uplifted  by  the  sea  could  mean  to  watchers 
on  that  perilous  coast.  His  imagination  was  giddy 
sometimes  with  all  the  imagery  of  the  liturgy,  and  all 
the  pageant  of  Nature.  But  if  there  were  one  moment 
in  the  year  more  dear  to  him  than  another  it  was  the 
blessing  of  the  fields  on  Rogation  Days. 

It  was  a  singularly  glorious  morning,  the  last  of  the 
three  Rogation  Days,  and  the  little  procession  started 
soon  after  six  o'clock.  Away  in  the  houses  near,  the 
lazy  were  roused  by  the  distant  responses — "  Miserere 
nobis, "  "Libera  nos,  Domine, "  "  Te  rogamus  audi  nos." 

But  for  the  most  part  people  were  out  at  work. 
Some  of  them  had  already  been  to  Mass  at  five  o'clock 
and  were  not  able  to  follow  the  procession.  A  little 
straggling  line  of  women  followed  M.  le  Vicaire  and  the 
processional  cross,  and  the  lights  which  took  turns 
to  be  blown  out  by  the  wind  and  re-lit  from  the  sur- 
vivors. First  they  passed  round  the  near  fields  where 
potatoes  were  grown  for  the  English  market,  through  a 
nursery  garden  by  the  cemetery,  across  a  field  of 
lucern  towards  the  sea.  The  tide  was  low;  a  hundred 
islets  of  rock  stood  out  a  warm  brown  in  the  deep 
green-blue  of  the  waves.  There  was  white  campion  in 
the  slits  of  the  rocks  and  pink  sea-thrift  and  creeping 
yellow  weeds  and  red  sorrel,  and  masses  of  golden 
lichen  on  their  sides.  The  jealous  sea  was  lapping  its 
praises  on  the  white  sands.  Down  steps  hewn  in  the 


4"  Horace    BlaKe 

rocks  went  the  little  procession,  then  along  the  sands 
for  a  short  distance,  and  up  again.  As  soon  as  they 
came  out  on  the  little  path  that  lay  between  the 
fields  and  the  cliff,  the  vicaire  checked  the  litany,  and 
another  chant  burst  out  in  his  big  musical  voice. 

At  the  low  white  hotel  a  gaunt  figure,  that  had  risen 
from  a  tumbled  bed,  was  leaning  out  of  the  big  window. 
Horace  Blake  was  utterly  glad  that  the  night  was  past ; 
he  filled  his  lungs  with  the  air,  and  then  his  ear  caught 
faintly  the  tones  of  the  litany.  A  moment  later  came 
more  distinctly  the  " Ave  Maris  Stella."  He  leaned 
out,  but  could  see  nothing  but  the  tops  of  the  trees  in 
the  hotel  garden  and  the  sea  and  the  farther  islands. 

'"Ave  Maris  Stella,  Dei  Mater  alma,'"  he  mur- 
mured. "I  can't  catch  it.  .  .  .  Ah!  now  I  can  .  .  . 
'Funda  nos  in  pace.'  .  .  .  Surely  I  can't  have  for- 
gotten it?  Now  it  is  louder. " 

"  Solve  vincla  reis, 
Prefer  lumen  csecis, 
Mala  nostra  pelle, 
Bona  cuncta  posce." 

It  became  fainter;  the  procession  was  moving  far- 
ther off.  He  was  not  sure  if  he  heard  or  remembered 
one  more  line: 

"Mites  fac  et  castos." 

He  covered  his  face  with  his  hands.  It  was  over 
twenty  years  since  he  had  heard  those  words. 

He  had  a  pleasant  impression  as  of  an  almost 
forgotten  scent  or  a  bit  of  some  once  long  ago  familiar 
landscape.  But  Roberts  coming  in  with  coffee  found 
him  scowling  at  the  glory  of  the  world  seen  through 
the  big,  open  window. 


VI 

HE   DID   NOT   WANT   ME 

ANNE  CONISTON  was  going  up  to  London  to 
see  her  sister,  Kate  Blake.     She  went  up  chiefly 
to  see  her,  but  she  would  have  gone  up  anyhow  to  get 
news  of  Trix. 

Anne  did  not  love  her  brother-in-law — far  from  it — 
and  so  she  had  to  go  very  carefully  in  dealing  with 
Kate.  She  agreed  with  Kate  on  nearly  all  subjects 
except  Horace  Blake.  To  her  it  seemed  extraordinary 
that  Kate,  brought  up  by  the  same  stern  father  as 
herself,  could  sink  to  many  of  Horace's  ideas.  It 
seemed  to  Anne  that  it  was  essential  to  one  who  did 
not  believe  in  religion  to  be  more  strict,  less  self- 
indulgent,  than  the  believer.  The  wild  element  in 
Horace  that  overbore  any  theory  of  restraint  was 
abhorrent  to  her.  She  liked  his  intense  proclamations 
of  candour,  of  courage,  of  contempt  for  lies.  But 
she  wanted  this  attitude  justified  as  it  had  been 
justified  in  her  father  by  a  stern  code  of  duty.  Yet 
she  was  proud  of  Blake's  genius  and  had  great  sym- 
pathy with  Kate's  flaming  pride,  an  almost  silent  white 
flame  of  pride,  in  his  achievements.  She  had  intense 
sympathy  with  the  way  they  had  worked  and  had 
succeeded,  but  it  had  been  for  Kate's  sake,  emphati- 
cally not  for  Horace's  sake,  that  she  had  made  a  great 
effort,  and  had  undertaken  to  give  a  home  to  Trix 
excepting  for  the  holidays.  The  holidays  were  at 
no  fixed  dates,  nothing  ever  could  be  fixed  that 

41 


42  Horace    Blahe 

depended  on  Horace  Blake.  Sometimes  the  holidays 
had  come  to  very  little  in  the  course  of  the  year. 
Anne  had  fostered  the  child's  pride  in  her  father,  as  it 
was  part  of  her  code.  But  Trix  knew  quite  well  that 
Aunt  Anne  did  not  like  Father,  and  it  puzzled  her 
in  Aunt  Anne;  it  was  so  very  stupid  of  her  not  to 
appreciate  him. 

Anne's  educational  system  had  been  healthy 
for  the  body,  and  the  mind  had  been  fed  with 
nothing  silly — only  great  things  in  literature  and 
history.  There  was  nothing  sentimental,  nothing 
but  a  conscientious  kindness  in  that  education. 
Trix  had  not  known  other  girls,  and  yet  she  had 
been  fairly  happy,  which  was  really  a  triumph  for 
Anne's  methods.  Anne  had  the  power  of  suggestion 
which  is  the  gift  of  the  educator.  Trix's  "difficult" 
moods  were  usually  of  short  duration,  being  subdued 
to  the  atmosphere  of  cheerful  common-sense.  Hun- 
gry, unsatisfied  feelings  there  must  have  been,  but 
they  seldom  reached  the  stage  of  complete  recognition. 
There  was  hardly  any  outside  influence  to  counteract 
Anne's  influence.  Their  quiet  life  had  not  been 
varied  by  some  of  the  occupations  that  are  most  usual 
to  women  of  their  class  in  the  country.  Trix  had 
never  decorated  a  church  for  Christmas  or  for  a  har- 
vest festival,  or  helped  to  get  up  a  village  entertain- 
ment. They  knew  very  few  neighbours  and  saw  little 
of  them. 

And  now  Trix  had  been  caught  up  and  taken 
away  like  a  parcel  to  travel  alone  with  Horace.  It 
was  incredible.  Anne  felt  it  hard  that  she  had  had  the 
work  and  the  trouble  of  bringing  up  this  child,  and 
then  should  be  ordered  to  put  her  fresh,  untried  youth 
into  the  hands  of  Horace  Blake.  If  he  needed  a 


Horace    DlaKe  43 

complete  rest,  why  should  not  Kate  take  him  away  to 
get  it?  Anne  submitted  in  silence,  but  as  she  pre- 
pared to  go  up  to  London  a  week  after  Trix  had  left 
her,  various  things  that  it  would  be  a  relief  to  say  to 
Kate  suggested  themselves  to  her  mind. 

Anne  had  boiled  the  water  for  her  tea.  She  did 
many  things  for  herself,  having  but  one  little  servant, 
and  was  sitting  at  breakfast  clad  in  her  neatest  coat 
and  skirt,  ready  to  go  to  London,  when  she  heard  the 
gate  of  the  garden  creak,  and  looking  through  her 
latticed  window  saw  Kate  walking  up  the  red-tiled 
pathway  between  the  wallflowers  and  primulas.  The 
door  was  open,  and  Kate  was  in  the  room  before 
Anne  could  get  up.  They  were  glad  to  meet,  and 
Anne  was  glad  that  Kate  had  felt  her  cottage  and 
garden  to  be  an  irresistible  attraction,  and  had  so 
forestalled  her  by  coming  down  by  an  early  train; 
but  she  was  a  little  sorry  not  to  have  her  day  in 
London. 

Both  sisters  were  tall ;  they  had  good  figures  and  held 
themselves  well,  but  Anne  was  smaller  and  less  de- 
fined in  every  way  than  Kate.  They  spent  the  morn- 
ing in  the  garden,  and  Kate  read  Horace's  letters  aloud, 
and  they  spoke  of  indifferent  things,  and  sprayed 
the  green-fly  off  the  buds  that  would  become  roses 
in  June.  Instinct  had  suddenly  put  a  gag  on  Anne's 
mouth;  she  could  only  speak  of  what  Kate  spoke  of. 
Then  they  lunched  on  salad  and  spinach  and  cheese 
and  fruit,  with  a  great  deal  of  black  coffee,  for  they 
had  digestions  to  be  envied.  At  last,  having  done  all 
the  things  they  usually  liked  doing  at  the  cottage,  they 
walked  under  the  trees  at  the  edge  of  the  common. 

"You  understand,"  said  Kate  quite  suddenly, 
"no  one  else  must  understand  that  Horace  is  dying. " 


44  Horace   BlaKe 

"  I  did  n't  understand, "  faltered  Anne.  The  sun- 
shine suddenly  dazzled  her;  it  was  a  great  shock. 
She  trembled,  and,  turning,  sat  down  at  the  foot  of  the 
nearest  tree.  Kate  looked  at  her  kindly.  She  de- 
scribed in  a  low,  even  voice  what  the  doctors  had  told 
her. 

"It  is  all  Drood's  fault,"  she  said  bitterly.  Drood 
was  the  little  doctor  who  had  attended  Horace  before 
he  went  to  the  specialist.  "  The  diet  has  been  wrong, 
medicines  wrong;  it  was  madness  to  let  him  go  on 
working.  I  could  flay  Drood  alive. " 

Anne  stared  at  her  with  faltering,  dazed  eyes. 
Horace  about  whom  Trix  had  written  so  brightly  and 
lightly,  Horace  whom  she  had  hated  for  so  long,  was 
dying  abroad,  and  Kate  was  here! 

Kate  sat  down  beside  her,  and  their  eyes  were 
fixed  on  a  bush  of  blackthorn,  not  on  each  other. 

"Trix  thinks  that  Roberts  is  only  a  valet,  but  he  is  a 
highly-trained  nurse. " 

Still  Anne  did  not  speak. 

"  He  did  n't  want  me;  he  wished  me  to  stay  behind 
and  look  after  things." 

"Does  he  know?"  asked  Anne. 

"No  one  has  told  him,"  said  Kate. 

"Horace  is  certain  to  know, "  said  Anne. 

"Yes." 

"Oh,  Kate!"  Anne's  hand  lay  on  her  sister's 
large  white  well-formed  hands.  It  seemed  as  if  her 
touch  were  pleasant  to  Kate,  because  she  did  not 
move.  They  sat  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in  silence,  and 
then  Kate  said  she  must  go,  and  they  rose.  As  they 
walked  across  the  common  she  spoke  again. 

"Anne,  I  could  not  refuse  him  Trix.  I  could  not 
tell  Trix  the  truth.  Don't  be  angry  with  me. " 


Horace    BlaKe  45 

"Dear  Kate." 

"  It  is  part  of  the  illness  that  he  does  not  want  me. 
It  may  change  at  any  time,  and  then  I  shall  go  at  once. 
He  may  live  for  months;  it  is  almost  certain  that  he 
will  not  die  quickly." 

"Will  Roberts  send  for  you?" 

"I  have  said  nothing  about  it  to  Roberts;  that 
would  worry  Horace;  he  sees  through  everything;  he 
would  find  out.  If  he  wishes  it  I  shall  stay  away 
to  the  end." 

Anne  pressed  her  hands  together  until  they  hurt. 
Was  this  then  to  be  the  end  of  all  that  Kate  had 
endured  from  Horace?  All  other  human  kind  of  all 
ages  would  have  had  some  ritual,  some  bond  of  com- 
mon action  with  which  to  meet  their  sorrow;  these 
women  had  none.  Cut  off  from  tradition,  dis- 
inherited from  the  beliefs  of  their  race,  brought  up 
chiefly  in  negation,  they  did  not  envy  the  ideas  of 
other  races  and  other  times.  They  were  standing  in  a 
position  unnatural  to  the  human  mind.  They  took  the 
facts  before  them  with  open  minds,  and  accepted  their 
ignorance  of  any  explanation  as  yet  another  fact  not 
to  be  explained.  They  suffered  at  times  more,  at  other 
times  less,  than  those  of  any  kind  of  faith.  They  had 
not  the  consolations  of  those  who  believe  more,  but  the 
sorrows  of  those  who  know  such  consolations  are  more 
living,  more  acute.  On  the  whole  there  is  most  vital- 
ity in  what  is  most  human.  The  soul  that  is  most 
alive  can  suffer  the  most  acutely,  but  the  dull  ache  may 
be  even  more  heavy,  more  exhausting. 

One  thing  they  could  express:  they  had  an  intense 
horror  of  bodily  pain. 

"Roberts  will  give  him  any  amount  of  morphia  if 
he  needs  it, "  said  Kate. 


VII 

ALL  LIES 

TRIX  was  absolutely  under  the  spell  of  St.  Jean 
des  Pluies.  She  felt  the  charm  of  the  open, 
friendly  faces,  of  the  odd  general  shops,  where  things 
that  she  had  never  seen  before  were  proclaimed  to  be 
English,  and  where  there  were  string-baskets  and 
wooden  sabots.  She  bought  some  dragees  de  menthe, 
and  reflected  that  peppermint  tasted  much  better 
under  such  a  name. 

"Why  were  they  singing  in  the  fields?"  she  asked 
the  woman  who  was  putting  up  the  peppermints  in  a 
paper  bag. 

"Because  it  is  the  Rogations." 

"What  are  the  Rogations?" 

"Mademoiselle  is,  then,  a  Protestant?" 

Trix  smiled.     "No." 

The  woman  looked  puzzled;  and  then,  as  if  polite- 
ness forbade  further  inquiries,  she  exclaimed:  "It  is 
to  bless  the  fields  that  we  may  have  a  good  harvest. " 

"And  do  you  often  have  good  harvests?" 

"Ah,  pour  ga,  non. " 

"But  you  still  ask?" 

"Mais  oui,  certainement ;  le  bon  Dieu  nous  donne 
ce  qu'Il  voudra,  mais  on  demande  toujours. " 

"  But  it  does  not  seem  to  have  much  effect, "  thought 
Trix  with  a  sarcastic  little  smile  as  she  left  the  shop. 
The  woman  who  kept  the  shop  had  been  quite  polite, 
but  she  was  not  curious  or  interested  in  strangers. 

46  . 


Horace   BlaKe  47 

Trix  wandered  on  through  the  village,  and  dawdled 
a  moment  in  the  cool  church.  It  was  soon  after 
dejeuner  and  the  sun  was  hot.  In  the  church  sat 
several  old  women,  absorbed  in  some  mental  actions, 
with  a  look  of  repose  on  toil-worn,  sunburnt  faces. 
They  wore  caps  composed  of  narrow,  white  strips  of 
lace  or  embroidery  that  showed  their  smooth  hair 
almost  uncovered.  One  or  two  younger  women  were 
kneeling. 

"An  English  Protestant,  or  American,  no  doubt," 
thought  the  sacristan,  who  was  saying  her  beads  close 
under  the  carved  stone  pulpit.  Trix  only  gave  her  a 
moment's  distraction. 

Presently  an  old  woman  pushed  open  the  heavy, 
creaking  door,  and  Trix  through  the  opening  saw  her 
father  standing  outside.  She  went  out  to  him.  He 
was  standing  in  the  shade,  his  tall  figure  bent  and 
leaning  sideways  on  his  stick,  a  little  way  from  the 
door.  He  looked  at  her  fixedly;  then  as  she  came 
near  him  he  smiled. 

"You  reminded  me  of  my  sister  Mary,"  he 
said. 

"Of  Aunt  Mary?" 

"Yes,  by  the  way,  she  was  your  aunt";  then, 
with  a  quick  sigh,  "that  might  account  for  it. " 

"She  died  very  young,"  said  Trix. 

"It  was  the  severity  of  the  life,"  said  Horace. 

"What  life?"  asked  Trix  breathlessly. 

"It  is  less  life  than  a  form  of  slow  suicide,"  said 
Horace  bitterly.  "She  was  a  nun." 

"Oh,"  gasped  Trix. 

He  did  not  seem  surprised  at  her  knowing  so  little 
about  his  sister. 

"  But  as  you  came  out  of  that  church  in  your  white 


48  Horace    BlaKe 

frock,  with  your  golden  hair  and  shining  eyes,  though 
hers  were  blue  and  yours  are  brown,  you  were  start- 
lingly  like  her.  Let  us  get  a  sail;  Roberts  has  found 
a  fisherman  who  will  take  us. " 

"Oh,  I  hope  it  is  'le  Petit-bon.'  I  talked  to  him 
yesterday  and  he  is  so  fascinating. " 

It  was  Petit-bon  who  was  waiting  for  them. 

Petit-bon  was  a  fisherman  who  had  an  inborn  gift 
for  taking  possession  of  people.  After  a  few  days  it 
would  have  seemed  treason  to  the  Blakes — p&re  et 
fille — to  have  had  any  other  man's  boat.  His  large, 
brown,  friendly  eyes  passed  all  over  Horace  as  he  leant 
back  in  the  low,  narrow  seat. 

"Monsieur  est  souffrant,"  he  said  kindly. 

Horace  did  not  look  responsive.  "In  the  good  air 
of  the  sea  Monsieur  se  remettra. "  He  was  then 
occupied  with  his  boat  and  shouting  orders  to  his 
boy.  Presently  he  began  to  sing: 


'Je  suis  un  gas  de  Saint  Malo, 

Et  vous,  fille  de  Cornouailles, 
Avec  le  pauvre  matelot 

Vous  de"sirez  les  accordailles. 
M'aimer  serait  du  temps  perdu, 

Chassez-moi  de  votre  pensee  .  .  . 
L'amour,  helas!  m'est  d£fendu 

Car  la  Mer  est  ma  fiancee! 

'Lorsque  j'e'tais  petit  garcon, 

Et  que  je  dormais  sur  la  grSve, 
La  Mer  chantait  a  sa  facon, 

Afin  de  mieux  bercer  mon  rfrve. 
Ne  tenons  plus  de  doux  propos, 

Comme  nous  faisions  tout  a  1'heure. 
Ma  fiance'e  a  le  coeur  gros: 

Entendez-vous  comme  elle  pleure?" 


Horace    BlaKe  49 

"It 's  delicious,"  cried  Trix. 

"Mademoiselle  ne  connait  pas  les  chansons  de 
Theodore  Botrel?"  he  asked  with  surprise. 

"Qu'est-ce  qu'on  chantait  ce  matin  au  bord  de  la 
mer?" 

"It  was  the  'Ave  Maris  Stella."1 

"And  what  is  that?" 

"My  dear  child,  don't  expose  your  ignorance," 
laughed  Horace.  He  repeated  some  verses  of  the 
hymn,  while  the  boatman  nodded  his  head  in  approval. 
Trix  looked  a  little  offended. 

"Monsieur  est  catholique?"  asked  Petit-bon,  who 
was  more  inquisitive  than  most  of  his  neighbours. 

"  Monsieur  ne  croit  a  rien, "  he  answered  smiling ;  an 
announcement  that  Petit-bon  could  only  pretend 
not  to  have  noticed.  He  was  inclined  to  think  that 
Horace  belonged  to  some  secret  society. 

"II  y  a  beaucoup  de  franc-macons  par  ici,"  he  said 
in  a  non-committal  voice. 

"Parmi  les  femmes  aussi?"  asked  Trix. 

"Non,  par  exemple,"  exclaimed  Petit-bon.  "II 
leur  faut  la  religion  aux  femmes;  qu'est-ce  qu'elles 
feront  quand  leurs  maris  seront  aux  peches?  Com- 
ment elever  leurs  petits?  comment  soigner  les  malades? 
comment  supporter  la  vie?  Nous  avons  besoin  tous 
de  consolations  de  temps  en  temps,  n'est-ce  pas, 
Monsieur?  mais  pour  les  femmes  toujours. " 

Trix  shuddered  at  this  summary  of  a  woman's  life, 
this  awful  grey  picture  of  toil  and  suffering  alleviated 
by  superstition  and  lies. 

"They  would  not  be  content  to  be  slaves  other- 
wise, "  she  said  in  a  low  voice  in  English  to  her  father. 

"  I  have  never  yet  seen  a  Frenchwoman  who  in  the 
faintest  degree  resembled  a  slave, "  said  Horace  smiling. 


5o  Horace   BlaKe 

"They  look  to  me  like  harassed  and  imperious  rulers. 
I  know  nothing  so  full  of  arrogant  self-confidence  and 
pitiless  logic  as  a  mere  de  famille. " 
Then  Petit-bon  began  to  sing  again: 

"En  vrai  Breton,  j'ai  pour  la  Mer, 

Un  amour  sauvage  et  farouche, 
J'ai  soif  de  son  baiser  amer 

Qui  parfume  et  meurtrit  ma  bouche. 
Rendez-moi  vite  mes  genfits, 

Reprenez  votre  boucle  blonde, 
Ma  fiancee  est  aux  aguets: 

Entendez-vous  comme  elle  gronde? 

"Quand  on  lui  fait  quelque  chagrin 

La  Mer  se  venge  de  1'infame  .  .  . 
C'est  pourquoi  le  pauvre  marin 

Ne  devrait  jamais  prendre  femme.  .  .  . 
Adieu!  puisqu'il  en  est  ainsi, 

Vous  ne  serez  pas  mon  e'pouse  .  .  . 
Mais  ne  r&dez  plus  par  ici, 

Car  ma  fiancee  est  jalouse." 

Horace  Blake  looked  over  the  water  and  delighted 
in  the  glorious  sensation  of  cutting  through  the  waves, 
he  felt  so  well,  so  light  in  every  limb.  The  holiday  was 
doing  him  an  immensity  of  good.  There  was  no  work, 
no  worry,  no  question  of  what  would  be  useful,  no 
stimulus  to  exertion,  only  pleasure  and  returning 
health.  It  was  one  of  those  interludes  in  the  progress 
of  a  disease  when  the  still  healthy  elements  of  the  body 
insist  on  being  in  the  ascendant.  It  did  not  surprise 
Roberts  in  the  least;  he  went  to  bed  each  night  as  a 
man  might  do  who  expected  to  be  called  into  action 
before  morning.  He  showed  great  tact,  and  seemed 
delighted  at  Blake's  enjoyment  of  his  food,  Horace 
could  eat  well,  walk  quite  a  fair  distance,  and  take 


Horace    BlaKe  51 

a.  good  siesta  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  but  Roberts 
doubted  if  he  got  much  sleep  at  night.  This  state  of 
things  lasted  for  nearly  a  week.  Then  one  morning 
Trix  went  to  her  father's  room  and  Roberts  opened 
the  door.  Horace  was  lying  with  his  face  to  the  wall ; 
an  odour  of  drugs  filled  the  room.  Roberts  only  said 
in  a  low  voice:  "Better  go  out  and  come  and  see  him 
later. " 

Trix  went  down  the  polished  wooden  stairs,  hardly 
knowing  that  she  had  received  a  shock.  She  struggled 
against  her  tears  with  a  little  youthful  optimism,  but 
she  was  distinctly  afraid.  It  seemed  as  if  a  shadow 
was  creeping  forward,  a  shadow  that  had  really  been 
with  them  in  London,  that  had  veiled  her  mother's 
eyes.  It  was  creeping  up  now  in  spite  of  the  sunshine. 
But  she  found  Petit-bon  on  the  beach  and  had  a  talk 
with  him,  and  then  she  walked  to  the  station  and 
bought  some  papers  and  one  or  two  books  that  looked 
amusing  for  her  father.  She  was  quite  bright  when 
she  came  in.  Roberts  was  in  the  hall  giving  some 
orders. 

"Will  father  be  down  for  dejeuner?"  she  asked. 

" He  can't  eat  anything, "  said  Roberts.  "Will  you 
stay  with  him?  I  must  go  out  to  the  chemist  in  the 
town." 

Horace  did  not  notice  Trix  when  she  first  went  in. 
She  sat  very  quiet  by  the  open  window.  He  was  lying 
on  his  back  with  his  eyes  closed,  and  an  angry  look  on 
his  mouth. 

"They  never  tell  the  truth,"  he  muttered  to  him- 
self, and  then  gave  a  little  groan.  "All  lies,"  he  said 
presently  again. 

Trix,  sitting  by  the  window,  shivered  with  fear. 

"Where's  the  lemonade?"     His  hand  went  out 


52  Horace    BlaKe 

feebly  towards  the  table  by  him.  Trix  went  to  the 
bed  and  gave  him  the  glass  of  lemonade.  "Lower," 
he  said ;  he  drank  a  mouthful  and  signed  to  her  to  take 
it  away. 

"Why  did  n't  the  fool  bring  the  drugs  he  wanted 
from  London?"  He  was  not  speaking  to  Trix,  and 
she  kept  silence. 

"Poor  child!"  he  said  suddenly,  and  then,  to  him- 
self: "What  does  she  know  about  anything?" 
Then  he  got  more  drowsy  and  was  presently  quite 
asleep,  breathing  noisily. 

It  was  the  longest  hour  Trix  had  ever  known  while 
the  heavy  breathing  went  on.  The  noises  in  the  hotel 
were  muffled,  but  every  now  and  then  some  movement 
in  the  room  above  sounded  loud  and  sharp  on  the 
wooden  floor. 

Trix's  life  had  been  so  orderly,  so  healthy,  so  regular. 
Her  aunt  and  she  both  had  splendid  health;  she  had 
never  known  sickness.  Roberts  at  last  came  in  with  a 
bottle  and  a  glass  of  water  and  signed  to  her  to  go 
down-stairs.  The  dining-room  was  empty.  A  maid 
with  a  kindly,  stupid  face  brought  her  an  omelette. 

"Monsieur  est  bien  malade, "  she  said  sympatheti- 
cally. 

"He  came  here  to  rest,"  said  Trix,  hungrily  eating 
her  omelette. 

"To  rest  .  .  .  pour  se  reposer?"  Her  eyebrows 
went  up  in  astonishment. 

"We  have  a  good  doctor  here,"  she  volunteered 
presently,  as  she  brought  a  dish  of  little  green  peas 
swimming  in  butter.  "He  attended  my  mother;  he 
knew  exactly  when  she  would  die.  When  he  says 
anybody  will  die,  that  person  will  surely  die;  he  is  a 
most  excellent  doctor." 


Horace    BlaKe  53 

Trix  could  have  screamed,  but  the  woman's  kindly 
face  was  company  to  her.  As  soon  as  she  had  finished 
she  went  up-stairs  to  see  if  she  could  send  Roberts  to 
get  some  dejeuner.  Her  father  smiled  when  she  came 
in;  the  look  in  his  face  had  changed,  it  showed  a 
certain  physical  relief.  Roberts  was  washing  his 
face  and  hands. 

"If  Miss  Blake  read  to  you?" 

"What  would  amuse  me  is  hardly  suitable  to  Miss 
Blake,"  said  her  father.  "My  dear  Trix,  did  you 
mention  at  the  bookstall  that  those  two  books  you 
brought  me  were  for  your  father's  Sunday  reading? 
They  were  hardly  literature  for  the  young  miss. " 

"  I  did, "  said  Trix,  with  a  little  flush  of  colour,  "but 
I  never  thought — 

"That's  quite  right — don't  think,"  said  Horace, 
and  moved  uneasily. 

For  an  hour  the  drug  which  Roberts  had  given  him 
appeared  to  succeed,  and  then  Roberts  began  to 
look  anxious.  Horace  groaned,  and  presently  low, 
deep-voiced  curses  alternated  with  the  groans.  He 
and  Roberts  forgot  the  presence  of  Trix.  Horace  was 
nasty — uncommonly  nasty,  but  Roberts  did  not 
think  much  of  that.  But  to  Trix  those  minutes  were 
hideous.  In  her  education,  pain  was  the  awful, 
incomprehensible  evil;  it  was  the  enemy  in  life.  She 
had  never  seen  anyone  in  physical  suffering  before. 

Horace,  looking  up  in  the  midst  of  a  fresh  blas- 
phemy, saw  her  brown  eyes  bright  with  horror  and 
terror. 

"Send  her  away!"  he  cried  angrily. 

Trix  went  blindly  to  her  room,  found  her  hat,  and 
almost  rushed  out  of  the  house,  and  did  not  pause  till 
she  reached  the  sea.  It  was  high,  the  sky  was  grey. 


54  Horace   BlaKe 

She  sat  down  on  a  rock  still  uncovered,  and  mechani- 
cally fixed  her  eyes  on  the  threatening  water. 

"Why  could  not  they  manage  better;  why  did  not 
Roberts  give  him  the  right  drug  at  once?  How  awful ! 
how  hideous!" 

There  had  been  no  dignity  in  it,  nothing  but  the 
lower  side  of  human  life.  It  had  been  so  animal.  She 
did  not  know  that  that  was  what  had  been  such  a 
shock  to  her  youth.  She  wanted  to  feel  nothing  but 
the  tenderest  pity,  and  she  had  had  to  struggle  with 
disgust.  That  extraordinarily  speaking  face  of  Hor- 
ace Blake's,  luminous,  not  only  in  the  strong,  light 
eyes  but  in  the  whole  countenance — had  been  terrible 
to  see.  Provocative,  suggestive,  magnetic — magnetic, 
suggestive,  provocative.  The  interviewers  had  rung 
the  changes  on  those  overworked  adjectives  again  and 
again.  Even  to  Roberts  that  face  when  in  pain  was 
astonishing,  and  to  Trix  it  had  just  made  the  world 
reel. 

Presently  she  cried — cried  heartily  and  freely, 
and  then  she  began  to  watch  the  waves  flowing  in 
craftily,  murmuring  in  their  incessant  talk  to  the 
unresponsive  earth.  There  is  no  sound  in  Nature  that 
can  soothe  human  ears  as  that  can.  She  began  to 
wonder  which  little  wave  had  in  it  the  force  to  reach 
her  feet,  and  which  had  not.  It  was  hard  to  measure 
the  power  of  their  force ;  one  which  looked  strong  and 
firm  broke  into  frivolous  spray,  and  another,  light, 
gentle,  and  curling,  was  suddenly  all  round  her  and 
washed  right  into  a  still  green  pool  behind  the  rock 
on  which  she  sat.  She  felt  faintly  pleased  that  her 
feet  and  her  skirt  were  wet.  Then  she  sighed  and 
went  back  to  the  hotel  to  find  out  how  her  father  was. 

Roberts  met  her  in  the  road  outside  the  hotel. 


Horace    BlaKe  55 

"Mr.  Blake  is  asleep,"  he  said  cheerfully. 

Trix  was  enormously  relieved,  but  she  felt  angry 
with  Roberts. 

"Why  could  you  not  give  him  more  morphia?"  she 
asked  with  a  child's  imperiousness. 

"  I  have  given  more  morphia  than  the  doctors  would 
allow  as  it  is.  Sir  Thomas  told  me  to  try  a  new 
American  drug  if  I  could  get  it  fresh.  That  is  what 
I  gave  him  to-day,"  he  said  sorrowfully.  He  was 
thinking,  as  he  had  often  thought  before,  that  Mrs. 
Blake  was  a  very  strange  woman  to  have  allowed  this 
child  to  be  here  alone. 

Roberts  did  not  look  as  if  he  wished  to  say  more. 
Trix  shrank  from  asking  him  what  she  longed  to  know. 
But  she  too  thought  as  she  turned  away  from  the 
hotel  that  her  mother  ought  to  come  to  her  father. 

Trix  moved  towards  the  village  a  little  lower  down 
the  road,  and  presently  came  into  the  little  open 
square  where  stood  a  great  crucifix,  immense  against 
the  sky.  She  found  the  narrow  street  that  led  from 
the  Place  to  the  church  half-filled  by  a  group  of  women, 
and  she  saw  that  two  were  weeping.  They  had  fair, 
smooth  faces,  and  fair  hair  drawn  tightly  back  under 
the  white  caps  from  their  wide  foreheads.  The  tears 
seemed  to  fall  lightly  over  the  strong,  calm  faces. 
Trix  turned  with  a  look  of  inquiry  to  the  woman  from 
the  little  shop  who  did  not  wait  for  her  question. 

Yes,  there  had  been  a  great  misfortune.  A  dear 
little  child — un  tout  petit — not  more  than  seven  years 
old,  had  climbed  down  the  face  of  the  rocks.  They 
would  do  it,  all  boys  would.  But  this  one  had  been 
so  small,  and  he  had  wanted  some  bright  shining  stone 
to  decorate  the  altar  beneath  the  Calvary,  and  he  had 
slipped  and  been  killed.  And  his  poor  mother!  The 


56  Horace    BlaKe 

whole  village  expressed  but  one  thought,  one  deep  sigh 
for  that  mother,  and  the  deepest  feeling  in  the  French 
character  made  them  as  one  family  in  their  mourning. 
They  told  each  other,  and  they  told  Trix,  what  a 
lovely  boy  he  had  been,  how  his  curls  were  gold  and 
his  eyes  Our  Lady's  blue.  He  had  been  the  little 
John  the  Baptist  in  last  year's  procession  at  the  Fete 
Dieu.  Then  someone  said  that  the  vicaire  had  been 
with  the  mother  ever  since  he  said  his  Mass.  "But 
he  is  at  vespers  now?"  "No,  they  must  manage  for 
once  to  sing  vespers  without  him."  "Ah!  he  is  the 
one,"  they  said,  "when  there  is  trouble." 

Trix  at  last  passed  on,  and  then,  feeling  as  if  she 
must  see  more  of  this  little  set  of  people  in  their 
trouble,  she  went  into  the  church.  It  was  full,  but  she 
found  an  empty  chair  by  the  door.  It  was  annoying 
that  her  chair  made  a  loud,  scraping  noise  on  the  flags, 
for  the  church  was  very  still  and  it  seemed  to  make  her 
conspicuous.  The  cure  looked  very  tall  in  the  pulpit 
— a  big,  strong  figure,  out  of  whose  mouth  came  a 
voice  soft  and  very  gentle,  the  voice  of  one  in  bad 
health.  Trix's  heart  was  heavy  and  her  nerves 
terribly  unstrung.  She  felt  at  once  an  extraordinary 
sense  of  peace  and  rest  in  this  company  of  strong, 
simple  folk.  It  seemed  as  if  they  absolutely  over- 
flowed with  something  that  lapped  her  about.  She 
shut  her  eyes  and  took  her  rest.  She  was  not  asleep, 
only  resting,  and  presently  she  caught  some  words  of 
the  preacher.  He  was  leaning  forward  with  a  curious 
simplicity  and  dignity  of  mien,  not  the  conventional 
pulpit  attitude,  but  that  of  one  trained  and  drilled  by 
a  deep  reverence  and  love  for  the  souls  he  spoke  to,  and 
the  sweet,  weak  voice  said:  "Eh  bien,  qui  de  nous, 
mes  fre'res,  n'a  pas  besoin  de  consolation?" 


Horace    BlaKe  57 

''  Trix  covered  her  face  with  her  hands.  Was  there 
indeed  no  one  who  was  not  in  want  of  consolation? 
Was  the  whole  world  in  pain?  She  could  have  said 
yesterday  that  she  did  not  want  consolation;  she 
could  not  say  it  to-day.  And  what  was  consolation? 
She  had  been  taught  to  think  that  sympathy  and  con- 
solation were  of  little  worth;  what  mattered  was  to 
prevent  evil,  not  to  cry  about  it  together  afterwards. 
But  whether  rightly  or  wrongly  she  wanted  con- 
solation, and  she  wanted  to  weep  with  this  village 
that  wept.  She  supposed  that  this  sweet  sense  of 
sharing  their  sorrow  was  in  some  way  consolation; 
anyhow  she  liked  it. 

She  was  too  full  of  her  own  thoughts  to  follow  the 
cure's  sermon  much;  besides,  utterly  simple  as  it  was, 
it  would  have  puzzled  her.  Trix  had  never  read  the 
gospels.  She  caught  words  from  time  to  time  that 
she  thought  she  misunderstood:  "Blessed  are  they 
that  mourn,"  for  instance.  Presently  a  door  to  the 
south  of  the  church  opened  and  the  vicaire  came  in. 
His  bright,  red  cheeks  were  shining  with  tears.  He 
knelt  down  on  a  chair  close  to  the  door;  they  all 
knew  whence  he  had  come.  As  soon  as  the  sermon 
was  ended  he  looked  round  at  the  choir,  and  then  led 
off  a  Latin  hymn  in  a  loud,  ringing  voice,  which  was 
taken  up  on  all  sides : 

"Regina  coeli,  laetare!     Alleluia. 

Quia  quern  meruisti  portare,  Alleluia. 
Resurrexit  sicut  dixit,  Alleluia. 
Ora  pro  nobis  Deum,  Alleluia." 

It  was  a  strange  old  chant,  something  like  a  Christ- 
mas carol  in  its  light,  bright  reiteration  of  the  Alleluia. 
But  it  had,  at  that  moment,  the  brightness  of  tears. 


58  Horace   BlaKe 

Trix  liked  it,  she  did  not  know  why.  The  Breton  folk 
loved  it,  because  they  had  always  sung  it,  and  because 
now  it  seemed  as  if  in  the  heights  of  Heaven  they  could 
hear  the  little  piping  voice  of  a  child  they  had  had 
among  them  yesterday,  still  singing  Alleluia  in  their 
company,  only  his  little  voice  had  already  the  sweet- 
ness and  strength  of  eternity.  For  "his  young  inno- 
cence had  been  crowned  with  an  eternal  weight  of 
glory." 


VIII 

OUR   NEW   BISHOP   IS  APPOINTED 

THE  presbytery  was  large;  the  dining-room  was 
long  and  narrow  and  very  plainly  furnished. 
It  had  a  touch  of  austerity,  and  implied  an  absence  of 
the  sense  of  the  beautiful,  though  there  was  nothing 
to  offend  the  taste  except  some  smooth  prints — libels 
on  Popes  and  ecclesiastics — that  hung  on  the  walls. 
But  deep  below  the  house  was  a  pleached  alley  cover- 
ing a  wide  terrace,  and  between  the  branches  of  the 
rough  and  wind-swept  hornbeams  shone  the  blue  sea 
with  a  thousand  brown  islands.  For  the  tide  was 
low,  and  pure  white  sand  made  a  base  to  the  greater 
rocks,  which  were  usually  half-hidden  by  the  water 
while  those  low-lying  dangers,  the  smaller  islets,  were 
usually  altogether  invisible. 

Four  priests  were  sitting  in  the  close  shade  of  the 
hornbeams  drinking  their  thin  black  coffee  out  of 
thick  glasses.  The  vicaire  finished  his  and  put  it 
down  on  the  wooden  table,  with  a  bang,  beside  his 
empty  liqueur  glass.  He  was  in  high  spirits ;  the  glory 
of  the  weather  excited  him.  He  was  a  son  of  the 
countryside,  and  after  dejeuner  he  was  to  pay  his 
weekly  visit  to  his  mother.  He  went  to  the  edge  of 
the  terrace,  observed  that  it  was  perfect  weather  to  get 
in  the  lucern,  burst  into  a  snatch  of  song,  abruptly 
stopped  and  sat  down  again  with  a  half-laugh  at 
his  own  thoughts.  The  vicaire  was  always  restless, 
generally  in  a  hurry.  His  black  hair  often  shone 

59 


60  Horace    BlaKe 

through  the  drops  of  perspiration,  and  his  black, 
slightly  prominent  eyes  shone  with  a  liquid  light  also. 
It  was  on  the  whole  best  for  his  companions  when  he 
was  in  good  spirits.  He  was  so  vehemently  black 
when  he  was  black  at  all,  which  was  pretty  often. 
But,  when  in  high  spirits,  he  was  only  really  aggra- 
vating to  the  sous-vicaire.  The  sous-vicaire,  whose  cul- 
tivated sermons  won  the  respect  of  the  sacristan,  was 
no  Breton,  no  poet;  he  was  not  intoxicated  by  sun- 
shine or  even  depressed  by  a  sea-fog.  He  was  more 
correct,  more  ecclesiastically  conventional  than  the 
vicaire,  and  it  was  unbearable  to  him  that,  after 
drinking  cider  or  black  coffee,  his  confrere  would 
bang  down  his  glass  either  as  an  expression  of  hilarity 
or  to  punctuate  a  mood  of  gloom. 

M.  le  Cure,  leaning  back  on  his  stiff  chair,  with  feet 
extended  and  crossed,  and  hands  held  out  touching 
each  other  at  their  finger-tips,  gave  forth  a  milder 
radiance  of  cheerfulness.  The  great  tall  figure  seemed 
singularly  at  rest,  and  the  heavy  eyelids  were  almost 
half -closed.  The  cheeks  were  flushed  red,  of  a  lighter 
red  than  the  vicaire' s  cheeks,  and  he  looked  the  picture 
of  health,  but  it  was  whispered  that  he  suffered  much. 
Some  shadow  of  disease  hung  about  him,  and  the 
all-pervading  gentleness  was  nurtured  by  the  experi- 
ence of  acute  pain.  He  loved  the  vicaire;  he  knew  him 
far  better  than  he  knew  his  pocket,  which  was  a  little 
difficult  to  get  at  as  his  figure  grew  larger.  He  knew 
in  his  younger  confrere  the  storms  and  the  gusts  of 
wind,  the  energy  and  intense  affections,  the  vanity 
and  the  humility,  the  joy  in  life  and  the  poet's  gloom, 
all  native  to  the  coast  to  which  they  both  belonged. 
He  had  him  well  in  hand,  that  vicaire  of  his,  and  kept 
him  to  the  level  below  which  he  might  otherwise 


Horace   BlaKe  61 

have  sunk,  for  the  younger  man's  sympathies  were  not 
only  enlisted  by  the  loss  of  a  husband  at  sea,  or  the 
fall  of  an  only  child  down  into  some  merciless  cleft  in 
the  harsh  rocks;  he  joyed  in  a  prize  won  in  a  lottery, 
and  might  have  become  too  merry  for  perfect  dignity 
at  a  wedding-feast.  The  cure  knew  so  well  the  mo- 
ment at  which  it  would  be  safest  to  send  the  vicaire 
to  travel,  whether  only  to  Mont  St.  Michel  or  far 
away,  as  far  as  Lourdes.  But  even  the  cure  never 
discovered  the  passionate  ideal  of  the  vicaire's  life — a 
voyage  to  America.  It  was  to  him  the  expression  of 
all  freedom  and  adventure,  all  the  poetry  of  expansion 
and  a  crown  to  ambition.  "  He  has  been  in  America, 
that  one,"  the  people  of  this  Breton  country  would 
always  say  to  one  another  after  that.  Perhaps  the 
vicaire  would  gaze  at  the  sea,  immersed  in  his  day- 
dream, and  then  give  an  angry  laugh,  after  which 
withal  he  would  shoulder  his  cross  again  and  look  in  on 
an  old  woman  whose  disease  was  conveyed  by  another 
sense  than  that  of  sight,  and  who  had  a  singularly 
repellent  effect  on  him.  All  his  loyalty  and  affection 
responded  to  the  restraining  gentleness  of  his  superior, 
and  he  worked  enough  for  two  men  to  save  the  cure 
in  strength  and  peace  of  mind. 

On  a  fine  afternoon  such  as  this,  and  a  Thursday, 
when,  as  everyone  knew  in  the  village,  he  would  go  a 
very  long  walk  to  visit  his  mother,  he  saw  all  his  com- 
panions in  sunshine,  and  was  ready  to  let  the  sous- 
vicaire  be  as  cold  and  dry  as  he  liked  without  minding 
him.  Shadowy  and  quiet  sat  the  old  priest-pensioner, 
the  bete  noire  of  the  sacristan,  le  tout  petit,  as  the  others 
spoke  of  politics.  The  cure  and  the  vicaire  being 
Bretons  were  warmly  devoted  to  monarchy,  though 
they  alluded  to  their  sentiments  in  a  humorous  man- 


62  Horace    BlaKe 

ner  and  understood  each  other  in  half-words  and  im- 
plications. The  sous-vicaire  hated  the  Republic  far 
more  than  he  loved  any  other  form  of  government. 

And  as  they  talked,  le  tout  petit  was  more  and  more 
the  little  odd  man  out.  For  le  tout  petit  had  been 
rallie  to  the  Republic,  not  rallie  under  order  from 
Rome,  but  rallie  from  conviction  and  with  enthusiasm. 
He  had  not  lived  among  peasants  with  hearts  that 
held  the  faith  of  centuries  undisturbed;  his  lot  had 
been  thrown  where  men  and  women  did  not  believe, 
did  not  pray,  where  they  associated  religion  with  the 
upper  classes.  Here  religion  was  a  bond  of  equality; 
there  it  had  seemed  to  support  a  terrible  inequality. 
Le  tout  petit  had  striven  to  get  into  touch  with  a  hard, 
incredulous,  money-getting  class  of  peasant  pro- 
prietors, and  it  had  seemed  to  him  that  if  they  could 
know  priests  who  were  entirely  dissociated  from  con- 
servative politics  and  aristocratic  friends,  they  might 
turn  to  them  once  more.  And  he  had  not  succeeded ; 
his  life  had  fallen  between  two  stools,  with  only  one 
brief  time  of  sunshine  when  a  sanguine  cardinal  had 
persuaded  the  then  Pope  to  advise,  where  advice 
was  a  command,  all  the  clergy  to  become  rallies 
to  the  Republic,  to  break  with  the  romance  of  the 
majority  of  their  hearts,  to  renounce  monarchical 
traditions,  and  to  kneel  to  kiss  the  hand  that  was 
quivering  with  eagerness  for  their  destruction.  Then 
le  tout  petit  had  been  happy  in  the  thought  that  his 
confreres  would  surely  come  to  see  that  Pope  Leo 
was  right,  and  as  true  patriots  they  would  be  under- 
stood and  loved  by  their  countrymen.  He  was  not 
young  then,  his  vitality  had  never  been  very  strong, 
and  that  was  his  St.  Martin's  summer. 

They  often  quite  forgot  him,  the  other  three,  as 


Horace    BlaKe  63 

they  descanted  on  the  painful  history  of  recent  years, 
and  the  latest  news  from  Paris.  It  was  easy  to  forget 
le  tout  petit,  and  even  the  cure  had  never  penetrated 
into  the  terrible  disillusion  that  had  followed  the  break- 
down of  his  hopes  that  an  esprit  nouveau  would  Christ- 
ianise the  Republic. 

He  was  listlessly  watching  the  brown  sails  of  some 
fishing-boats  going  swiftly  to  the  west  and  turning  to 
a  magnificent  red  in  the  sun,  and  purposely  not 
listening  to  the  talk  of  the  other  three,  when  his 
attention  was  caught  by  a  bit  of  news  that  M.  le  Cure" 
was  imparting. 

"Our  new  bishop  is  appointed,"  he  said.  "Mon- 
seigneur  Ledoulx." 

Le  tout  petit  turned  round  eagerly. 

"Monseigneur  Ledoulx!"  he  cried  joyfully. 

"Ah!  you  know  him,  then?" 

"  He  was  a  true  and  good  friend  to  me. " 

"They  say,"  said  the  cure,  "that  he  is  zealous, 
indefatigable,  and  one  that  makes  himself  listened  to 
by  the  Government. " 

"He  has  been  suspected  of  Modernism,"  said  the 
sous-vicaire,  who  had  a  mania  for  suspecting  hetero- 
doxy, and  who  also  had  just  felt  the  swift  and  half- 
conscious  annoyance  that  he  had  often  experienced 
before  on  hearing  of  ecclesiastical  promotion. 

"It  is  fortunate,"  said  the  cure  dryly,  "that  to  be 
suspected  of  Modernism  is  not  the  same  thing  as  being 
tainted  by  it." 

"Any  man  of  character  or  originality  must  pass 
through  that  way,"  said  the  vicaire  rather  roughly. 
"There  are  always  to  be  found  people  with  noses  so 
sharp  that  they  can  create  smells  where  they  don't 
exist." 


64  Horace    BlaKe 

The  sous-vicaire  drew  himself  up  stiffly.  The 
vicaire  heard  the  clock  strike  three  before  the  others 
noticed  it ;  it  was  the  signal  for  his  start  to  walk  to  his 
home,  and  not  even  the  news  of  the  bishop's  appoint- 
ment could  keep  him  back  a  moment  longer. 

After  he  had  gone  the  cure  became  first  silent,  then 
restless.  At  last  he  said  in  his  gentle,  courteous  way: 

"A  delightful  day  for  a  walk,"  and  then  asked  the 
sous-vicaire  to  take  a  message  from  him  to  the  notary 
who  lived  some  way  from  the  village. 

To  his  surprise  le  tout  petit  found  that  the  sous- 
vicaire  was  asking  him  to  walk  out  with  him.  He 
readily  agreed. 

They  had  left  the  village  behind  them  when  the 
sous-vicaire  after  a  moment's  break  in  their  hitherto 
uninteresting  chit-chat,  said  with  meaning: 

"M.  le  Cure*  wanted  to  be  alone." 

The  simple  old  man  looked  inquiringly  first  at  the 
neat  conventional  figure,  and  then  at  the  conventional, 
well-shaved  face  of  his  companion. 

"He  was  expecting  M.  Jules  from  A —  — naming 
a  town  at  some  distance.  "There  will  be  a  consulta- 
tion to-day,  and  he  did  not  intend  us  to  know  it." 

"But  then" — and  the  faint,  vague  eyes  of  the  old 
priest  were  turned  towards  him  again.  "How  did 
you  know  it?" 

"I  heard  M.  le  Cure"  tell  Marthe  that  Messieurs  les 
medecins  were  to  be  shown  up-stairs,  and  as  we  left  the 
village  did  you  not  see  M.  Jules  in  his  carriage?" 

"  I  earnestly  hope  it  is  not  serious. " 

"And  if  it  is  not  serious  would  our  doctor  ask  to 
have  M.  Jules  in  consultation?" 

Then  they  paid  their  visit  to  the  notary  and  walked 
back  in  the  rich  afternoon  sunlight, 


Horace    BlaKe  65 

"Undoubtedly,"  said  the  sous-vicaire,  "M.  le  Cure" 
will  retire  after  this." 

"Oh,  I  trust  not!"  cried  the  other. 

"And  then,  I  ask  you,  who  is  to  be  the  cure  in  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies?" 

"But  the  vicaire,  surely?     The  people  adore  him." 

"Out  of  the  question;  besides,  his  roughness  and 
his  want  of  manners,  where  would  he  be,  what  would 
he  not  do,  if  M.  le  Cure  did  not  restrain  him?  Besides, 
there  are  other  reasons  of  which  you  must  know,  which 
are  known  to  authority ;  but,  tiens!  here  is  the  sacristan. 
We  must  greet  her.  It  is  long,  madame,  since  you 
have  walked  so  far." 

Le  tout  petit  was  so  much  annoyed  by  this  con- 
versation that  he  hardly  realised  the  sacristan's  pre- 
sence. 

"What  did  you  mean?"  he  asked  anxiously,  as  soon 
as  the  sacristan,  still  bowing  with  official  dignity,  had 
left  the  sous-vicaire  to  replace  his  hat  and  rejoin  his 
companion. 

"Nothing,"  he  said;  "if  you  know  nothing,  be 
content.  I  am  not  the  person  to  revive  gossip  any- 
way. Tell  me  now  of  your  friend,  our  new  Bishop — 
Mgr.  Ledoulx. "  And  he  made  himself  thoroughly 
agreeable  to  the  old  man,  who  was  accustomed  to  dull 
walks  by  himself. 

All  the  same,  le  tout  petit  understood  the  nature  of 
his  companion  much  better  than  his  companion 
understood  him  after  that  walk. 

There  were  no  after  symptoms  of  the  doctors'  visit 
at  the  presbytery,  and  it  was  impossible  to  detect  any 
change  in  the  serene  bearing  of  M.  le  Curd. 


IX 

FINIS 

TRIX  did  not  see  her  father  again  until  the  evening 
of  the  next  day.  He  was  much  annoyed  at  the 
thought  of  how  he  must  have  appeared  to  the  child, 
who  knew  nothing  of  life  or  of  pain.  He  did  not  want 
to  see  her  until  he  could  efface  the  painful  impression. 
When  Trix  was  at  last  summoned  by  Roberts  to  his 
room,  it  was  all  in  order,  and  flowers,  big  irises  and  big 
pink  roses,  stood  in  a  green  jug  on  the  table  by  him. 
He  was  sitting  up  in  an  armchair  in  a  smart  dressing- 
gown.  The  face  was  haggard,  but  the  great  luminous 
eyes  were  smiling.  Trix,  he  could  see,  was  a  little 
tremulous,  but  the  most  morbid  fancy  could  not  detect 
in  her  any  kind  of  shrinking. 

Horace  began  at  once  to  talk  to  her  about  a  letter 
from  her  mother,  giving  an  amusing  account  of  things 
said  to  her  or  overheard  by  her  at  the  theatre  where  his 
play  was  acted.  He  did  not  give  her  the  letter,  there 
were  things  in  it  quite  unsuitable  to  her.  Trix  was 
keen,  excited  and  amused,  her  father's  success  was  a 
romance  to  her.  Then  her  quick,  gentle  sympathy 
responded  to  anything  that  would  distract  and  help 
him.  Trix  had  more  of  the  actual  quality  of  kindness 
in  her  than  is  quite  common  in  girls — much  love  may 
miss  that  quality  of  kindness;  it  is  more  often  the 
fruit  of  experience  than  an  inborn  instinct,  but  when 
it  is  inborn  it  is  the  nobler  side  of  tact.  It  could  not 
have  been  taught  to  Trix  in  any  school  of  education, 

66 


Horace    BlaKe  67 

and  she  might  well  have  missed  it  in  her  lonely  aunt's 
school  of  brave,  cheerful  stoicism.  She  wanted  to  be 
charmed  by  her  father — kind  souls  want  to  be 
charmed — and  he  wanted  to  charm  her,  and  put  out 
all  his  powers  to  do  so.  Roberts,  moving  about  in  the 
next  room,  was  surprised  at  hearing  the  patient  make 
himself  so  agreeable,  for  Horace  Blake  did  not  charm 
him  in  the  least.  There  was  something  strange,  too, 
in  those  paternal  and  filial  relations,  something  that 
showed  want  of  intimacy.  The  man-nurse  had  felt 
from  the  first  that  Horace  and  his  daughter  were  not 
intimate.  They  had  got  on  "like  a  house  on  fire"  on 
the  journey,  but  it  was  exactly  like  the  making 
acquaintance  of  two  sympathetic  people. 

"A  queer  card!"  thought  Roberts,  "makes  his 
wife  stay  at  home  and  brings  out  this  child,  who  '11  get 
some  pretty  bad  shocks  before  we  've  done." 

At  last  he  felt  that  he  must  settle  his  patient  for  the 
night  and  send  Miss  Trix  off  to  bed.  Horace  grum- 
bled, but  submitted;  his  eyes  dwelt  insistently  on  Trix 
as  she  stood  by  him,  reluctant  to  go  and  reluctant  to 
disobey  Roberts.  When  she  had  gone  the  light  faded 
from  his  face. 

"  Well,"  he  muttered,  "the  evening  has  flown,  and 
the  child  is  happy  in  idealising  me  again.  I  wonder 
what  poor  Kate  would  think  of  us?  Poor  Fate!  I 
should  never  have  succeeded  without  Kate.  Her 
complexion  was  never  as  good  as  Trix's,  but  her  feet 
and  her  hands  are  as  fine  as  they  are  made." 

His  mind  turned  to  the  work  he  wanted  to  finish 
and  send  back  to  his  wife,  and  it  was  long  after  he  was 
settled  in  bed  before  he  could  sleep. 

Next  morning  Roberts  told  Trix  that  her  father  was 
better,  and  was  at  work,  so  she  knew  that  she  must 


68  Horace    BlaKe 

not  go  to  his  room.  The  three  next  days  were  the 
last  in  which  Horace  Blake  produced  any  creative 
work. 

It  was  only  the  third  act  of  the  play  that  was  left  to 
be  written.  In  the  two  first  acts  Blake  had,  as  has 
already  been  said,  abandoned  the  attempt  to  satisfy 
the  censor.  He  had  told  his  wife  that  The  Burning 
Bush  should  be  published  as  a  book,  and  that  he 
would  trust  to  the  public  to  force  it  on  the  stage.  It 
was  partly  no  doubt  that  as  his  health  failed  the 
difficulty  of  presenting  his  creations  with  sufficient 
diplomacy  was  too  exhausting;  but,  also,  that  success 
had  made  him  sure  of  his  public.  Whether  even  dur- 
ing the  writing  of  the  first  act  there  had  been  a  certain 
premonition  or  subconscious  knowledge  that  his  time 
was  short,  which  had  made  him  inclined  to  have  one 
last  free  fling,  one  last  unmasked  jeer  at  the  world  as 
he  had  seen  it,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  No  doubt  he 
lost  in  artistic  effect,  in  reserve,  in  suggestion,  and 
perhaps  in  stage  presentation  by  disregard  of  the 
fetters  that  had  hitherto  kept  his  work  in  perspective, 
but  probably  he  gained  in  vigour.  When  he  read 
over  the  first  two  acts  in  the  different  surroundings 
on  the  Breton  coast,  he  recognised  that  there  would 
be  fresh  force,  a  more  electric  touch,  in  the  work 
he  was  just  about  to  do.  Probably  the  increased 
morphia  supplied  a  hectic  flush  in  the  atmosphere  of 
that  last  act. 

This  last  production  was  no  swan-song,  no  pathetic 
melody;  it  was  not  exactly  shrill,  so  that  it  could  not 
be  called  a  scream ;  perhaps  it  was  more  like  the  last 
peal  of  thunder  in  that  life  of  storm.  There  was  in  it 
the  note,  "All  we  who  are  about  to  die  revolt  against 
you."  Hitherto  it  had  been  easy  for  the  public  to 


Horace    BlaKe  69 

say  that  it  did  not  know  what  he  was  at,  that,  after 
all,  it  was  only  the  conventionalities  and  pruderies 
that  he  was  attacking.  But  now  he  took  off  the  mask 
and  strutted  before  them.  It  suited  the  dramatic 
instinct,  this  blare  from  a  dying  man.  He  would  go 
down  with  a  splash,  with  a  great  noise,  not  a  foolish 
empty  sound;  it  was  the  curse  of  genius  that  should 
resound  long  after  he  had  fallen  into  silence.  This 
would  assure  his  renown,  this  would  satisfy  Kate's 
passion  for  fame.  He  at  the  very  end  would  put  forth 

un  cantico 

Che  forse  non  mornL 

The  artistic  faculties  seeming  to  be  entirely  in  posses- 
sion silenced  the  fear  of  death  and  screened  and  framed 
the  picture  he  was  to  paint,  so  that  he  was  conscious  of 
nothing  else.  There  was  no  element  in  his  nature, 
good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  that  did  not  appear  to  be 
given  up  as  fuel  to  feed  the  imagination. 

There  was  the  body  to  reckon  with.  But  the  body 
can  so  often  be  thoroughly  bullied  and  made  a  slave 
for  a  time,  sure  of  its  revenge. 

Roberts  was  cowed  into  submission ;  he  had  never 
been  cowed  by  a  patient  before.  Blake  wrote  some- 
times in  bed,  sometimes  in  a  chair,  sometimes  kneel- 
ing, only  half-conscious  of  the  physical  misery  that 
produced  this  perpetual  restlessness.  Roberts  gave 
him  the  blackest  coffee,  or  brandy,  or  tea,  without 
remonstrance;  took  away  plates  of  untasted  food 
without  remonstrance,  and  did  not  even  dare  to  sug- 
gest that  he  should  go  out  of  doors.  Horace  neither 
washed  nor  dressed  during  those  three  days,  but  when 
the  last  scene  was  written,  and  for  the  last  time  and 
with  a  flourish  of  the  pen  he  had  put  "Finis"  on 


70  Horace    BlaKe 

the  last  page,  he  said  to  himself:  "Bath,  bed  and 
morphia." 

He  fainted  coming  out  of  the  bath  and  again  in  bed, 
but  there  was  a  certain  satisfaction  in  his  face,  the 
satisfaction  of  work  done:  at  that  moment  he  missed 
Kate.  He  missed  her  acutely,  for  she  would  have 
understood.  While  Roberts  was  at  supper,  Horace 
got  the  morphia  for  himself,  and  next  morning  Roberts 
gave  warning ;  he  would  return  to  England  as  soon  as 
Mr.  Blake  could  find  a  substitute. 

The  church  bells  were  ringing,  for  it  was  the  eve  of 
the  Fete  Dieu,  as  the  MS.  of  the  last  act  of  Horace 
Blake's  last  play  was  put  into  the  post-box. 


X 

WHY   ON   EARTH  DID   I   DO    THAT? 

FROM  the  earliest  moment  of  the  dawn  of  mom- 
ing  the  village  had  been  astir ;  carts  of  pure  white 
sand  had  been  brought  in  the  night  before,  and  it  was 
now  spread  in  a  narrow  foot-path  wherever  the  pro- 
cession was  to  pass.  There  was  a  pleasant  sense  of 
bustle,  and  traditional  bustle,  for  it  had  ever  been  thus 
on  the  morning  of  the  Fete  Dieu.  Christianity  was  in 
possession  on  that  morning  at  least,  and  if  in  the  big 
wine-shop  off  the  Place,  or  at  the  post-office,  some 
Freemasons  were  muttering  wicked  things,  they  had 
to  mutter  them  very  low  indeed.  One  young  man 
was  looking  angry ;  he  had  put  up  the  shutters  of  his 
master's  shop,  intending  to  get  himself  off  for  the  day 
to  join  some  congenial  spirits  in  a  neighbouring  town. 
Two  girls,  who  were  decorating  the  next  house  by 
hanging  clean  sheets  from  the  windows,  asked  him  a 
little  tauntingly  what  he  was  doing  in  the  way  of 
decoration.  He  became  furious,  and  while  struggling 
with  the  shutters,  kept  calling  out :  "  Qu'on  ne  s'occupe 
pas  de  moi,  qu'on  ne  s'occupe  pas  de  moi,  c'est  tout  ce 
que  je  demande,  moi."  He  said  it  over  and  over 
again.  As  if  anybody  in  France  ever  were  left  to 
himself  for  good  or  evil ! 

A  little  soldier  in  uniform,  kneeling  in  the  road, 
looked  up  at  the  girls  with  a  roguish  smile.  He  was 
very  busy  making  a  picture  of  a  ship  with  rose  leaves 
and  the  heads  of  white  pinks  in  the  sand.  The  white 


72  Horace    DlaKe 

sand  pathway,  on  which  no  one  would  step  except  the 
priest  who  carried  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  was  edged 
with  wide  green  flags  that  looked  like  spikes  of  palm, 
and  at  little  intervals  knelt  women  and  children  making 
their  different  designs — crosses  or  the  "I.  H.  S." — in 
flowers  in  the  sand.  But  no  one  had  made  such  an 
elaborate  or  successful  design  as  the  little  soldier. 

Farther  on,  close  to  the  church,  there  was  even  more 
being  done.  Two  young  women  with  bright  faces 
were  busily  hanging  pink  paper  roses  round  the 
attenuated  pillar  of  a  twelfth  century  cross  in  the 
happiest  unconsciousness  of  the  barbarism  they  were 
committing.  A  girl,  who  was  arranging  a  bunch  of 
great  purple  irises  at  its  foot,  cried  out  shrilly  to  some 
"madame"  to  know  if  that  would  do  well,  but  no  one 
was  at  leisure  to  answer  her.  At  length  all  was  fin- 
ished, and  little  boys  in  red  cassocks  wreathed  with  real 
red  roses,  like  Roman  emperors  crowned  for  a  debauch, 
gathered  in  the  Place  and  walked  together  to  the  sac- 
risty. Everybody  was  arriving  now,  and  the  proud 
parents  of  the  "little  Christ" — who  was  dressed  in 
white,  crowned  with  thorns  and  carrying  his  cross — 
had  to  demand  room  that  was  eagerly  accorded  for  his 
passage  into  the  church.  Then  followed,  clothed  in 
sheepskins,  a  child  of  a  year  older,  bearing  the  sym- 
bolic cross  of  reeds  that  is  traditionally  given  to  St. 
John  the  Baptist. 

The  organ  burst  forth  noisily  and  drowned  all  the 
squeaking  of  the  crowded  chairs  on  the  stone  pave- 
ment. The  sacristan,  feeling  at  the  height  of  the 
circumstances,  was  more  than  usually  imperious  in 
manner.  The  innumerable  candles  were  lit.  M.  le 
Cure*  was  ready  vested.  In  another  moment  Mass 
would  begin. 


Horace    BlaKe  73 

Horace,  unconscious  of  the  excitement  that  had 
reached  even  to  the  secular-minded  servants  of  the 
hotel,  came  out  of  his  room  for  the  first  time  since  the 
writing  fit  had  come  upon  him.  The  light  had  flared 
and  died  out.  The  two  days  and  nights  in  which 
Horace  had  given  what  the  journalists  would  soon  call 
his  last  message  to  the  world  had  left  him  a  sorry 
sight.  The  hotel  servants  looked  at  each  other 
significantly  as  he  made  his  slow  way  down  the  shallow 
wooden  stairs.  He  looked  as  if  he  breathed  with 
difficulty;  his  sallow  face  seemed  to  have  become  a 
little  crooked ;  the  long  nose  and  the  mobile  mouth  had 
lost  their  unity  of  design.  The  great  grey  eyes  that 
held  the  light  so  curiously  distributed  in  their  depths 
were  startling  in  their  mixed  intensity  and  dimness. 
The  whole  person  was  awry  and  out  of  drawing, 
shattered  and  exhausted.  Now  that  the  work  was 
done,  the  last  production  had  been  given  out  of  the 
brain  stuff  which  was  needed  to  keep  him  alive.  He 
looked  like  a  man  who  stumbles  in  the  morning  after 
a  drunken  debauch.  He  had  not  been  able  to  endure 
the  skilled  touch  of  Roberts'  fingers;  he  had  dragged 
on  his  own  clothes  and  mistaken  a  shirt  stained  with  a 
brown  drug  for  the  clean  one  he  had  meant  to  put  on. 
He  stumbled  twice  in  the  little  front  garden  of  the 
hotel,  but  even  a  kindly  American  dared  not  offer  to 
help  him. 

As  he  turned  towards  the  sea  he  took  off  his  hat  and 
then  loosened  his  collar,  and  the  warm,  keen  air  swept 
on  to  his  chest.  He  wanted  to  think  of  what  he  had 
sent  to  his  wife;  he  regretted  now  that  he  had  not 
altered  a  phrase  that  displeased  him.  He  still  wished 
he  could  read  it  to  Kate  and  then  hear  her  read  it  to 
him,  but  he  only  wished  for  her  to  be  there  just  for 


74  Horace    BlaKe 

that,  not  for  anything  else — he  did  not  want  her  there 
to  see  things  in  her  face  and  hear  things  in  her  voice. 
It  was  only  as  the  fellow-pirate  in  their  intellectual 
battle,  the  one  who  could  best  assure  him  that  he  had 
conquered,  that  he  would  like  to  have  her.  For  the 
meeting  face  to  face  with  the  terror  that  stood  a  few 
feet  away,  that  could  not  be  shrouded  long  in  the 
thinnest  of  veils,  he  had  no  use  for  her.  The  artistic 
absorption  had  come  to  an  end,  it  had  left  him  with- 
out defence,  without  distraction,  without  control 
over  his  thoughts,  over  morbid  imaginations  and 
recollections. 

He  stumbled  on,  and — why,  he  did  not  know — 
certain  cruel  things  he  had  done  in  his  life  came  with  a 
curious  clearness  to  his  mind,  cruel  things  that  had 
followed  sensuality  as  if  they  were  not  separate  or 
responsible  actions.  Did  even  Kate  know  half  of 
what  she  must  know  soon?  And  the  child  before 
whom  he  had  come  to  act  a  part — could  she  always 
be  deceived?  He  was  aware  that  Roberts  despised 
him,  knew  him  to  be  rotten  morally  as  well  as  physi- 
cally. He  tried  to  think  of  the  reviews,  the  applause, 
the  splendid  fact  of  fame,  the  sense  of  conquest,  and  it 
all  came  faintly.  He  was  so  sick,  so  tired,  so  nause- 
ated, and  he  was  growing  so  terribly  afraid.  Then  there 
was  music  somewhere,  a  solemn  chant;  he  felt  faintly 
annoyed  with  it.  It  grew  louder ;  he  turned  into,  a  nar- 
row street  that  led  on  to  the  Place  and  round  a  corner 
from  a  lane  behind  him  it  burst  strongly  upon  him: 

"  Pange  lingua  gloriosi 
Corporis  mysterium." 

He  feared  he  could  not  get  away  now;  he  crept  back 
into  an  angle  of  the  wall  and  the  people  passed,  singing 


Horace    BlaKe  75 

with  a  peculiar  mixture  of  enthusiasm  and  matter-of- 
fact — the  same  hymn  they  had  always  sung  on  the 
same  day — they  and  their  fathers,  and  their  fathers' 
fathers  before  them.  He  was  wedged  in  by  the  crowd, 
and  the  noise  and  pressure  tried  him,  he  was  as  un- 
noticed as  the  most  miserable  beggar.  He  had  an  odd 
fancy  that  they  were  so  much  alive  these  people,  so 
rich  while  he  was  starved  and  dying — and  no  one  gave 
him  a  crumb  of  their  comfort.  Was  it  not  a  sham,  this 
singing,  these  children  crowned  with  flowers,  this 
Presence  that  was  coming?  He  had  said  so  all  his 
manhood,  had  given  it  the  subtle  insults  of  genius. 
He  suddenly  told  himself  that  he  could  not  have  aimed 
his  shafts  half  so  well  if  he  had  not  known  what  it  was 
to  adore  what  he  insulted.  He  longed  to  get  away  out 
of  it  all,  down  to  the  solitude  and  peace  of  the  beach, 
but  it  was  now  evident  that  he  could  not  escape.  The 
sense  of  being  penned  in  by  the  small  crowd  became  a 
terrible  oppression.  Would  they  press  still  closer  as 
they  passed?  Would  he  be  able  to  breathe  if  they 
did?  And  then,  partly  out  of  the  physical  fear  of  the 
crowd,  instead  of  thinking  how  he  hated  all  the  super- 
stition and  hypocrisy  and  priestcraft  visible  to  his 
eyes,  by  a  sudden  freak  of  his  imagination  he  began 
to  realise  the  mind  of  the  crowd.  He  saw  that  they 
were  full  of  exaltation,  of  emotion — even  the  more 
reserved  had  their  share  in  it,  and  it  was  an  intensely 
human  emotion.  There  was — or  so  they  themselves 
believed — a  vast  margin  to  this  multitude,  not  only 
their  own  dead  belonged  to  it,  but  the  dead  and  the 
living  of  all  races  and  tribes  under  the  sun — a  crowd 
which  no  man  could  number.  He  seemed  physically 
oppressed  by  the  small  visible  crowd  and  mentally 
oppressed  by  the  vast  invisible  crowd.  The  intellect- 


76  Horace  BlaKe 

uals  to  whom  he  appealed  for  sympathy  and  applause 
were  so  few;  the  people  who  could  sing  hymns  to  the 
spiritual  powers  that  rule  their  destinies  were  so  many. 
As  they  jostled  against  him,  singing  with  a  terrible 
vigour,  he  had  a  sort  of  imaginative  vision  of  how  they 
would  all  look  on  him.  He  fancied  he  saw  with  ab- 
solute clearness  what  that  crowd  would  think  of  him 
could  they  know  his  life.  His  dramatic  power  was 
taking  advantage  of  his  physical  condition  to  add  to 
his  wretchedness. 

The  voices  rose  high,  but  they  seemed  to  Horace  to 
come  out  of  the  earth  at  his  feet,  and  from  the  depths 
of  that  earth  there  seemed  to  rise  a  power  that  re- 
sponded to  these  children  of  men.  He  tried  to  control 
the  horrible  fancy  of  an  atmosphere  of  indignation  and 
condemnation.  "  It  is  an  old,  old  trade,  the  trade  of  a 
blasphemer, "  he  could  fancy  that  a  dark  man  in  the 
crowd  was  speaking  to  him,  "and  man  as  well  as  God 
has  executed  judgment  on  him. " 

The  crowd  was  thinner,  he  could  breathe  better. 
He  began  to  hope  he  could  move  on  now  with  the 
procession  and  get  away  round  the  market  corner. 
But  he  had  to  wait.  Soon  no  one  passed  but  the  choir 
boys  and  the  priests  immediately  in  front  of  the  canopy. 
He  disliked  these  priests'  faces.  His  nervous  fear  was 
less.  The  canopy  was  coming  now  and  there  were 
space  and  flowers  and  boys  swinging  censers,  and  a 
hush.  It  was  like  a  cool  wind  rising  on  a  hot  day.  He 
was  exhausted,  he  felt  as  if  he  had  escaped  the  cruelty 
of  the  crowd,  that  he  had  been  rescued.  Then  he 
looked  under  the  canopy,  the  crowd  was  cruel,  but  this 
Presence  was  kind.  All  his  childhood  was  with  him 
for  the  moment.  He  had  been  so  proud  of  throwing 
flowers  before  another  canopy,  and  as  he  grew  older 


Horace   BlaKe  77 

he  had  been  proud  of  swinging  a  censer.  He  forgot 
everything  present  that  did  not  belong  to  the  past. 
The  priest  on  one  side  of  the  canopy  brushed  against 
him  in  his  narrow  corner.  He  stumbled,  and  then, 
instead  of  recovering  himself,  he  knelt  down.  A  few 
moments  later  he  walked  away  with  difficulty.  Pres- 
ently he  stopped  and  dusted  his  knees  with  his  hand- 
kerchief. 

"Why  on  earth  did  I  do  that?"  he  asked  himself. 


XI 

I    PREFER   MORPHIA 

MLE  CURE  had  spent  a  pleasant  quarter  of  an 
•  hour  with  a  visitor  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  the 
day  after  the  Fdte  Dieu.  The  visitor  was  bien  pensant, 
croyant,  and  a  comfort  to  any  cure  for  a  quarter  of  an 
hour's  chat.  The  two  men,  one  tall,  weather-beaten 
in  appearance,  the  other  short,  stout,  smooth,  commer- 
cial, were  finishing  off  with  a  number  of  elaborate 
bows ;  it  was  amazing  that  they  both  found  room  in  the 
small  porch  for  the  waving  of  their  hats  and  the 
sweeping  of  their  arms. 

This  effect  of  bowing  and  sweeping  gestures  was  not 
lost  on  Horace  Blake,  who  was  standing  at  the  foot  of 
the  steps  that  led  up  to  the  presbytery  from  the  front 
garden.  His  courteous  smile  took  on  a  twinkle  of 
amusement  as  he  watched  the  parting.  The  stout 
croyant  moved  down  one  flight  of  steps  as  Horace 
slowly  mounted  the  other.  The  curt  stood  with 
the  door  open,  waiting  politely  for  this  next  visitor. 
That  the  newcomer  was  in  an  advanced  stage 
of  disease  must  have  been  evident  at  once  to  a 
less  experienced  eye  than  that  of  the  host  of  the 
presbytery. 

"Could  M.  le  Cure*  give  me  a  few  minutes'  inter- 
view?" asked  Horace. 

M.  le  Cure*  would  be  happy  to  do  so.  He  led  the 
way  into  the  long,  bare  dining-room.  The  visitor 
looked  blankly  at  the  table  covered  in  oil-cloth,  at 

78 


Horace  BlaKe  79 

the  stiff  chairs  arranged  against  the  walls,  and  the 
portraits  above  them. 

"I  can't  talk  here,"  thought  Horace,  and  a  sullen 
look  clouded  the  light  that  had  lit  his  strange  great 
eyes  a  moment  before. 

"Ah!  but  what  a  view!"  he  cried  aloud  in  English, 
and  with  one  feeble  movement  more  he  sank  on  to  a 
horsehair-covered  chair  near  an  open  window. 

The  cure  smiled. 

"'Earth,  sea  and  sky  hath  nought  to  show  more 
fair,'  "  he  quoted,  proud  but  stumbling. 

"Ah,  you  know  our  literature,"  cried  Blake  in  his 
most  flattering  manner,  inwardly  chafing. 

"No,  indeed;  a  little  learnt  at  school,"  the  priest 
went  on  in  French.  "  I  cannot  talk  English  easily,  nor 
quite  always  understand  it." 

Meanwhile  the  old  man  reflected  that  he  had  never 
seen  any  face  change  in  so  extraordinary  a  way  from 
moment  to  moment.  It  seemed  to  be  winning,  con- 
temptuous, humble,  impertinent,  angry,  grateful,  in 
bewildering  succession.  He  did  not  sum  it  up  dis- 
tinctly, but  it  left  on  him  a  painful  impression  of  a 
body  wearing  out,  and  a  mind  feverishly  alive ;  it  was 
as  if  some  doubtful  spirit  were  very  slightly  held  by  the 
flesh  and  yet  tortured  by  it.  The  glory  of  sea  and  sky 
made  for  peace.  Horace  looked  calmer  for  a  moment, 
but  presently  the  priest  could  see  that  the  stranger  was 
afraid,  an  unpleasant  cowardice  was  in  his  drooping 
mouth. 

" No  one  speaks  the  truth, "  he  almost  snarled,  "but 
it  must  be  plain  enough  to  one  who  has  seen  many 
men  die. " 

"Ah,  many  indeed, "  said  the  soft  gentle  voice  of  the 
big  Breton,  "and  for  the  most  part  in  peace." 


8o  Horace    BlaKe 

"Whether  they  have  led  good  lives  or  evil?" 

The  cure  hesitated.  "Yes,"  he  said  after  a  mo- 
ment, "yes." 

"It  is  something  to  know  that,"  said  Horace  with 
a  smile  of  irony.  "But  what  do  you  suppose  happens 
next?" 

"  Purgatory. "  He  looked  beyond  Horace  out  on  to 
the  blue  sea  and  the  brown  islands  glorified  in  the 
sunset. 

"I  believe  in  nothing." 

"And  yet  Monsieur  knelt  when  the  procession 
passed. " 

"One  must  do  the  civil  thing,"  said  Horace  in 
English. 

The  old  man  flushed.  Was  this  simply  an  impu- 
dent atheist  who  had  followed  him  into  his  own  house 
to  insult  God? 

"To  tell  the  truth,  I  could  not  conceive  why  I  had 
done  it,"  said  Horace  quickly,  "and  then,  as  I  stum- 
bled walking  away  I  thought  someone  said,  '  Why  per- 
secutest  thou  Me?'  I  believe — indeed,  I  am  quite 
sure — that  that  impression  was  an  echo  of  my  child- 
hood, something  subconscious,  something  from  inside 
me" — he  was  eager  to  analyse,  to  explain — "speaking 
to  another  part  of  me.  What  makes  me  think  so  is 
that  several  times  that  day  I  saw  Christ  in  my  mind, 
as  I  had  seen  Him  in  a  picture  in  my  childhood  in 
Dora's  illustrations  of  the  Wandering  Jew.  In  the 
picture  the  Jew  has  just  insulted  Christ  as  He  carried 
His  cross,  and  under  it  was  written : 

"'Je"sus,    la   bonte  meTne,   me   dit   en   soupirant, 

"'Tu  marcheras  toi-me'me,  pendant  plus  de  mille 
ans.' 

"Then,  in  the  midst  of  this  imagery,  I  had  a  clear 


Horace    BlaKe  81 

notion  of  love  inflicting  punishment — a  thing  I  have 
mocked  at  often  and  often.  I  have  girded  at  Dante, 
and  the  words  he  wrote  on  the  gates  of  hell."  He 
paused  a  moment  and  added  with  the  faintest  shrug 
of  the  bony  shoulders:  "That  was  my  spiritual 
experience  on  the  Fete  Dieu,  M.  le  Cure". " 

The  doubtful  expression,  the  dubious  courtesy  were 
again  visible  on  the  strange,  suffering  face. 

"  It  is  often  thus, "  said  the  older  man,  "  in  a  moment 
of  exaltation  we  realise  some  picture,  some  incident,  of 
our  childhood." 

Horace  recognised  the  delicacy  with  which  his 
companion  chose  that  point  for  remark.  There  was  a 
marked  absence  of  intrusion  in  the  singular  gentleness 
of  the  cure  which  suited  him. 

"Yes,"  he  responded,  "it  was  a  moment  of  excite- 
ment; I  recognise  that.  I  had  just  concluded  a  last 
work  of  a  blasphemous  character.  What  do  you  say 
to  a  blasphemer,  M.  le  Cure?" 

"That  there  are,  alas,  many  such  in  this  country." 

Horace  was  struck  into  silence.  "Many  such!" 
He  had  seemed  almost  unique  in  his  own  country, 
in  his  own  set.  Those  about  him  had  not,  had  never 
experienced,  enough  faith  to  blaspheme. 

"Then  it  is  a  passion  you  recognise?" 

"  Yes,  Monsieur,  the  Gospel  recognised  it. " 

"And  when  that  passion  of  blasphemy  is  exploited, 
is  turned  to  worldly  advantage,  is  the  capital  on  which 
you  live?" 

"That,  if  I  understand  what  Monsieur  is  saying,  is 
also  not  uncommon  in  this  country." 

Again  Horace  was  silenced.  "  I  see, "  he  thought  to 
himself,  "that  to  you  it  is  a  type. "  His  eyes  laughed. 
"It  is  the  same  category  that  holds  the  Jews,  the 
6 


82  Horace   BlaKe 

Freemasons,  the  journalists  who  scream  against  God 
and  His  Church.  I  am  labelled,  and  all  my  vices 
would  only  fit  the  type  in  this  old  man's  view;  how 
simple,  how  strangely  simple!" 

He  felt  angry  at  such  simplicity. 

"And  what  would  you  say  to  the  blasphemer?" 

"  Qu'il  se  mette  a  genoux,  Monsieur. " 

"  As  long  as  his  knees  will  bend,"  said  Blake  bitterly. 

"Ah,  oui,  mon  Dieu!" 

There  was  a  depth  of  sympathy  in  that  exclamation 
that  brought  a  kind  of  satisfaction  to  Horace.  No 
one  had  pitied  him  openly  as  yet,  and  it  was  soothing, 
but  all  the  same  he  shied  at  it. 

"Then  nothing  will  surprise  you?"  said  Horace 
irritably.  "It  is  all  prepared  for  in  your  text-books. 
The  atheist  is  a  man  of  bad  life. " 

"Text-books,"  said  the  old  man,  "if  properly 
learned  can  be  discarded  by  experience.  I  have 
known  virtuous  unbelievers ;  in  your  country,  I  believe, 
there  are  many  non-Christian  good  men." 

"  I  am  not  one  of  them, "  said  Blake  roughly.  "But 
I  have  bored  you  for  long  enough;  you  have  endured 
me  with  angelic  kindness."  There  was  a  faint  sar- 
casm in  his  voice;  then,  with  a  rapid  change  to  a  tone  of 
philosophic  analysis,  he  went  on: 

"There  is  something  in  your  coast,  in  your  church, 
in  your  people,  M.  le  Cure,  that  stirs  inherited  instincts 
in  me.  The  voices  I  heard  by  the  sea  on  the  morning 
of  the  Rogations,  the  faces  of  the  women,  the  very 
pavement  of  the  church,  seem  to  be  impregnated  with 
a  view,  a  scheme  of  life  that  embraces  all  that  men  need 
to  know.  Centuries  of  human  life  and  suffering  seem 
here  to  press  on  the  imagination,  deep  answering  to 
deep;  the  souls  of  those  living  are  big  with  the  souls 


Horace    BlaKe  83 

of  the  past.  Your  Armorica  is  strangely  near  the 
depths  of  the  universe." 

"I  have  never  lived  anywhere  else." 

"Well,  many  souls  have  lived  here  and  are  gone; 
others  are  living  and  going,  M.  le  Cure,  and  they  have 
many  consolations  I  cannot  have,  but  on  the  whole  I 
prefer  morphia." 

"Why  not  have  both,  Monsieur?" 

Blake  rose.  He  shook  his  head.  "Now  for  the 
bows,"  he  thought;  but  there  was  no  gay  waving  of 
the  hat  this  time ;  the  cure  was  gentle,  courteous  and 
reserved. 

Blake  decided  as  he  wandered  slowly  and  feebly 
down  the  road  to  the  hotel  that  he  liked  him.  But  he 
was  annoyed  with  himself,  he  felt  that  his  manners 
had  decidedly  failed.  He  had  betrayed  his  miseries, 
both  physical  and  mental,  more  than  he  intended,  and 
then  his  attitude  had  been  a  little  impertinent ;  there 
had  been  in  it  something  of  a  rather  cheap  cynicism. 

"I  might  have  left  him  alone,"  he  thought.  "I 
might  have  known  that  I  would  get  nothing  out  of 
him  of  the  least  use  to  me. " 


XII 

IF   HE  DIES   NOW,    WHAT   AN  ENIGMA 

KATE  had  felt  the  hotel  without  Horace  to  be  im- 
possible. She  hated  their  rooms  for  the  anguish 
of  the  past  days  with  the  peculiar  hatred  of  a  woman 
who  was  more  impressed  by  material  surroundings 
than  she  owned  to  herself.  She  decided  to  stay  for  the 
present  at  her  club,  which  was  almost  opposite  the 
hotel. 

Nothing  could  have  suited  her  better.  She  found 
everything  she  wanted  without  feeling  that  anything 
had  to  be  settled  beyond  provision  for  the  next  day's 
needs.  At  first  she  only  unpacked  one  box  and  left 
the  other  fastened  as  a  sign  that  she  was  ready  to  take 
the  train  to  Southampton  at  an  hour's  notice. 

Presently  arrived  the  first  of  a  series  of  cheerful 
letters.  Horace's  letters  were  garrulous  and  a  little 
triumphant.  Roberts  wrote  with  satisfaction,  but  she 
recognised  his  professional  caution.  And  Trix  wrote 
about  the  Bretons  and  the  sea  and  the  fun,  and  how 
much  father  was  enjoying  himself.  Kate  was  always 
at  work  in  the  silent  reading-room  when  these  letters 
arrived,  and  as  they  multiplied  into  a  thick  packet  she 
began  to  feel  the  great  fear  lessen;  the  fear  that  had 
lately  made  her  so  anxious  to  see  Horace's  face  clearly 
when  she  shut  her  eyes,  as  clearly  as  when  he  had  been 
with  her.  Sir  Thomas  Goodstone  had  not  in  the  least 
expected  anything  immediate;  it  had  only  been  her 
own  strong  imaginary  fear  that  the  face  would  fade 

84 


Horace    BlaKe  85 

and  that  she  would  never  again  have  that  faded 
likeness  shamed  by  the  reality.  There  were  things  in 
the  letters  that  hurt.  She  was  ashamed  that  she 
minded  Horace's  absorption  in  Trix  and  what  they 
did  together.  She  put  the  thought  away,  but  it 
would  not  go,  or  when  it  had  gone  it  came  back  so 
easily. 

Altogether  it  was  a  great  thing  to  be  constantly 
busy.  There  were  proofs  in  masses  to  correct  for  the 
new,  complete  edition  of  Blake's  already  published 
works.  She  loved  the  job.  She  liked  seeing  his  work  as 
a  whole,  recognising  how  it  had  developed,  going  over 
those  early  things  that  had  been  so  little  understood 
at  the  time.  She  liked  to  see  how  hard  he  had  worked, 
how  strenuous  and  thorough  the  work  was,  always  his 
best;  always  he  had  had  that  infinite  capacity  for 
taking  pains.  She  had  recognised  it  so  long  before 
the  world  suspected  it.  Mornings  were  passed  in  such 
toil,  and  then  the  rest  of  the  day  was  spent  in  society, 
which  was  much  more  tiring,  although  it  was  society 
on  the  whole  extremely  congenial,  for  the  people  who 
sought  her  were  those  with  whom  admiration  of  Blake 
was  now  a  primary  article  of  their  literary  conventions. 
She  smiled  sometimes  that  he  should  be  the  object  of 
just  those  curiosities  of  folly,  weaknesses  of  fashion, 
conventional  adoption  of  unconventional! ties,  that  he 
had  tilted  against  from  the  first.  But  there  were  some 
who  really  understood. 

There  came  a  day  without  any  letters — only  a  post- 
card from  Trix.  Father  was  not  well ;  he  had  been  in 
dreadful  pain,  but  was  now  asleep.  Kate  was  sitting 
at  the  little  writing-table  in  the  corner  where  members 
were  becoming  accustomed  to  see  her,  when  the  post- 
card was  brought  to  her.  She  read  it  over  and  over, 


86  Horace    BlaKe 

and  then  she  sprang  up  as  if  the  card  settled  the  ques- 
tion. She  would  go  up-stairs  and  pack ;  if  there  were 
no  boat  from  Southampton  to-night,  she  would  go 
round  by  Paris.  Then  she  sat  down  again  with  an 
effort,  ordering  herself  to  be  reasonable.  He  had  had 
dreadful  pain  often  before ;  it  was  nothing  new.  She 
had  known  he  would  have  attacks  of  pain  when  she 
let  him  go.  He  had  known  it  when  he  wanted  to  go 
away  alone.  She  had  determined  to  let  him  have  his 
way,  and  would  she  break  down  at  the  first  attack  of 
pain  and  risk  going  to  him  against  his  will?  By  the 
evening  she  was  thankful  that  she  had  been  firm. 
She  was  dressing  to  dine  out,  with  a  heavy  heart,  when 
a  telegram  was  brought  to  her,  "  Much  better,  no  pain, 
hoping  to  work  to-morrow,  love,  Horace. "  She  could 
not  but  feel  happy,  because  he  was  no  longer  in  pain. 
It  often  passed  off  completely  after  it  had  been  acute. 
Then,  too,  he  had  felt  for  her  anxiety.  He  had  taken 
pains  to  word  the  telegram  so  as  to  carry  conviction  to 
her  mind.  Her  face  looked  brighter  than  it  had  looked 
since  he  left  her.  "  Love,  Horace. "  In  her  loneliness 
the  words  were  music  to  her. 

Kate  was  dining  out  in  congenial  company.  The 
hostess  was  perhaps  a  social  climber,  but  she  was  not  a 
crude  climber;  she  concealed  the  rather  brutal  and 
childish  nature  of  the  species  with  skill  and  kindliness. 

She  chose  well  for  Mrs.  Blake,  putting  her  between 
two  admirers  of  Horace's  work,  one  an  old-young  man 
who  ranked  as  a  critic  among  an  esoteric  set  of  play- 
goers, and  the  other  a  real  young  man  who  had  sur- 
prised the  world  by  writing  a  successful  biography. 
The  biographer  was  named  Stephen  Tempest ;  he  was 
tall,  straight  in  limb,  clear  in  glance,  dark-haired. 


Horace   BlaKe  87 

Kate  began  by  listening  to  the  very  old-young  man, 
who  had  a  voice  with  a  chirp  in  it. 

"  So  ridiculous,  so  prudish,  such  cant.  .  .  .  No  one 
but  Blake  could  have  shown  them  up  like  that.  And 
it's  funny,  isn't  it?  that  people  like  old  Lady  Fenni- 
more  went  to  the  play  and  said  it  was  so  pretty." 
He  sniggered.  "So  pretty!  But  how  did  he  become 
a  dramatist?  Anything  hereditary  account  for  it?" 
The  tone  was  intimate  and  caressing.  "Now  with 
Tempest,  you  know,  sitting  on  your  left,  we  know  how 
his  talents  came  to  him.  His  father  was  what  used  to 
be  called  a  polished  essayist — that,  I  imagine,  is  the 
difference  between  genius  and  talent.  Genius  can't 
be  accounted  for." 

At  last  the  lady  he  really  wanted  to  talk  to  on  the 
other  side  gave  him  her  ear,  and  Kate  was  left  to  si- 
lence. Her  hostess  at  that  moment  admired  her  calm 
dignity,  her  unconscious  beauty ;  it  was  not  the  beauty 
of  the  women  she  generally  met  with.  Kate's  was  a 
face  hard  to  read,  not  because  it  was  smoothly  dis- 
guised, but  because  it  bore  strange  matters  with  no 
apparent  effort  at  disguise  at  all.  Stephen  Tempest, 
turning  to  her,  saw  with  a  little  surprise  that  she  was 
some  way  off  in  her  thoughts. 

"I  have  been  in  a  quarrel  already,  so  early  in  the 
meal,"  he  began,  with  the  appearance  of  being  too 
much  interested  in  his  subject  to  drop  it.  "My 
neighbour  is  defending  Purcell's  Life  of  Manning,  and 
I  am  attacking  it. " 

"It  was  a  curiously  candid  book,"  said  Kate. 

"No, "  said  Stephen,  "  I  maintain  it  was  not  candid; 
it  was  biassed,  passionately  biassed,  and  it  affected 
candour.  The  world  takes  for  granted  that  the  bio- 
grapher is  always  on  the  side  of  his  subject.  There- 


88  Horace    BlaKe 

fore  they  credit  him  with  being  truthful  against  his 
inclinations  whenever  he  shows  the  faults  of  his  hero. 
This  man  had  the  journalistic  instinct  to  pose  as  the 
candid  biographer." 

"  It  is  so  long  since  I  read  it, "  said  Kate ;  "but  in  any 
case  you  would  never  conceal  the  faults,  would  you?" 

"  No,  never  conceal  what  makes  for  a  true  picture, " 
said  Stephen;  "but  just  as  you  may  use  the  good 
qualities  for  idealisation,  you  may  use  the  bad  ones  for 
blackening  the  man's  character.  It  is  a  question  of 
the  proportion  in  which  you  use  the  facts." 

"Do  you  think,"  asked  Kate,  "that  the  nearest  to 
a  man,  the  most  intimate,  could  ever  see  him  in  his 
true  proportions?  If  I  survive  my  husband  I  shall 
certainly  not  attempt  such  an  impossible  task  as  his 
biography." 

Stephen  was  startled,  but  kept  himself  from  showing 
it. 

"I  believe  you  are  right,"  he  said  quietly.  "It 
would  be  very  hard  to  focus  what  has  been  so  near." 

"Who  knows  what  is  true  about  anybody  else?" 
cried  Kate,  not  affecting  any  disguise  to  a  bitterness 
that  was  perceptible. 

"Or  about  themselves?"  said  Stephen,  who  began 
to  feel  strongly  interested. 

"And  so,"  said  Kate,  "after  all,  what  is  the  use  of 
talking  about  truth?" 

"That  way  madness  lies,"  said  Stephen,  smiling. 
"Besides,  it 's  not  true  that  we  can't  attain  a  great 
deal  of  relative  truth,  but  neither  is  it  true  that  we  can 
ever  come  to  the  judge's  summing  up.  The  time  for 
judging  is  not  yet." 

"That  is  a  striking  quotation;  where  is  it  from?" 

Stephen  stared  at  her  for  a  moment  only. 


Horace    BlaKe  89 

"Ah!  I  see  you  mean  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  and 
they  relegate  the  summing  up  to  a  future  state,  and  I, 
knowing  there  is  no  future  state,  have  a  hankering 
after  a  summing  up  now." 

"You  can't  in  any  case  judge  of  a  picture  till  it 's 
finished." 

"But  when  is  it  finished?"     Kate  shivered. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Stephen,  "that  we  ever  know 
exactly  when  it  is  finished.  We  are  told  by  the 
experienced  that  great  things  may  happen  almost  at 
the  very  end. " 

Kate  shook  her  head. 

"That  is  an  idea  the  world  has  grown  out  of;  the 
end  is  the  collapse  of  the  mind,  it  is  the  death  of  the 
faculties.  Death-bed  repentance  is  one  of  those 
fictions  of  religious  groups  of  people — a  man  dies  as  he 
has  lived." 

"But  the  question  is,"  said  Stephen,  "what  has 
been  going  on  in  him  of  which  we  don't  know?  The 
end  may  be  a  revelation  rather  than  a  change. " 

"Ah!"  said  Kate,  "generally  one  knows  enough  to 
see  that  such  a  change  would  be  a  farce,  a  thing 
imagined  by  the  bystanders  and  suggested  by  them  to 
a  weakened  brain.  Take,  for  instance,  a  death-bed 
repentance,  as  it  is  commonly  described.  A  group 
of  people,  praying  hard,  make  the  suggestion,  the 
failing  brain  catches  the  suggestion — there  is  much 
in  it  to  soothe  the  feelings  and  a  kind  of  vanity  is 
excited  by  it  too, — the  dying  man  plays  up  to  his 
audience. " 

"I  own,"  he  answered,  "that  such  theories  of  the 
power  of  suggestion  seem  to  me  to  be  extraordinarily 
unreal — a  quite  hypothetical  use  of  science.  Forgive 
me  if  I  am  impertinent." 


90  Horace    BlaKe 

"Oh,  no,  you  are  not  impertinent,"  said  Kate 
warmly.  "Nor  do  I  think  that  I  am  extraordinarily 
unreal,  but  I  see  we  are  going;  our  hostess  is  moving. " 

As  Kate  dawdled  a  few  moments  before  going  to  bed 
that  evening  she  thought  of  Stephen  Tempest  with 
interest,  and  as  Stephen  Tempest  smoked  a  cigar  in 
company  with  a  friend  belonging  to  the  theatrical 
world  in  his  club  smoking-room  he  spoke  of  Mrs. 
Horace  Blake. 

"She  has  a  very  fine  head,"  he  said. 

"Did  she  say  how  Blake  is?" 

"No.     Is  he  ill?" 

"He  is  knocked  out  of  time  for  good  and  all  in  my 
opinion.  I  saw  him  at  supper  with  rather  a  wild  set 
just  before  he  went  away.  It  was  pretty  clear  that 
he  was  n't  long  for  this  queer  world,  of  which  he  has 
been  one  of  the  queerest  inmates." 

"It's  terribly  sad,"  said  Stephen.  "His  work  is 
only  half  done.  I  thought  he  had  only  cleared  the 
ground  for  what  was  to  come.  He  has  shown  up 
hypocrisy  and  pharisaism ;  he  has  destroyed  them  with 
such  power  that  I  felt  certain  that  he  could  construct 
in  an  equally  workmanlike  fashion.  His  literary  gift 
is  intensity.  If  he  dies  now  what  an  enigma !  I  own 
there  is  no  one  I  should  like  to  understand  as  I  should 
like  to  understand  Blake." 

"Muddy  water!"  said  the  actor.  "But  what 
bewilders  me  is  that  she  should  let  him  go  away 
without  her,  and  whom  do  you  suppose  he  has  taken 
with  him?" 

"Whom?"  asked  Stephen. 

"Their  only  child — a  girl  hardly  eighteen — and  a 
man-nurse.  Meanwhile  Mrs.  Blake  lives  on  the  fat 


Horace    BlaKe  91 

of  London  dinner-parties  and  ladies'  luncheon-clubs 
who/£/e  her  daily." 

"She  doesn't  look  as  if  she  were  overfed,"  said 
Stephen  mus'ngly.  Here  was  additional  mystery, 
and  he  had  already  felt  Kate  to  be  mysterious. 

"Mind  you,"  the  actor  went  on,  "to  my  certain 
knowledge  that  woman  has  worn  herself  to  the  bone 
for  Horace  Blake.  They  were  as  poor  as  rats,  but  I 
doubt  if  he  ever  wanted  for  anything — she  did.  And 
now  they  are  comparatively  rich  she  has  nursed  him 
alone  for  a  year  past.  I  would  n't  nurse  Horace  Blake 
for  a  week  for  any  pay  conceivable.  And  then  she 
sends  him  off  to  finish  a  terrible  illness,  horrible  pain, 
all  by  himself;  she  has  thrown  up  the  sponge  at  the 
very  last  minute. " 

"She  doesn't  look  like  a  woman  who  has  broken 
down  in  any  way, "  said  Stephen. 

"Well,  the  Blakes  have  always  been  a  puzzle  to  me, 
but  how  I  love  to  act  his  plays !  The  smallest  part  in 
any  of  them  is  thick  with  good  things,  and  I  love  to 
see  people's  faces  when  he  gives  them  a  box  on  the  ear 
on  one  side,  and  they  grin  and  think  they  understand 
him,  when  slap  comes  a  box  on  the  opposite  ear,  and 
they  are  so  excited  they  laugh  from  sheer  pleasure  at 
the  tickling  of  their  nerves. " 

"Yes,  but  what  does  he  mean?"  queried  Tempest. 
"On  my  theory  he  has  been  bent  on  clearing  the 
ground  of  rubbish,  but  he  clears  away  a  deal  that 's 
important,  if  it  gets  in  his  way,  at  the  same  time. 
However,  if  he  means  to  build  afterwards,  I  under- 
stand it." 

"Bless  me,  I  can't  take  it  all  so  seriously;  you 
attach  too  much  importance  to  this  literary  business 
altogether.  Live  with  us  a  bit ;  meet  Horace  Blake  at 


92  Horace    BlaKe 

a  few  supper-parties,  only,  poor  devil,  he  won't  attend 
many  more.  The  papers  talk  of  a  complete  rest, 
but  poor  old  Horace  can't  rest  till  he  's  full  of  dust 
from  head  to  foot.  His  worms  will  have  more  go  in 
them  than  other  people's." 

"  Mrs.  Blake  hardly  looks  the  figure  of  a  guest  at 
theatrical  supper-parties. " 

"No,  she  doesn't  fancy  that  side  of  things;  be- 
sides— "  The  actor  checked  himself.  Tempest  was 
much  more  occupied  just  now  with  Mrs.  Blake  than 
in  gathering  information  about  her  husband's  repu- 
tation. 

"The  daughter  must  be  a  remarkable  girl  to  be 
sent  off  like  that." 

"A  beautiful  child,  with  a  great  look  of  Blake, 
nothing  of  Mrs.  Blake.  But  a  mere  child.  I  don't 
think  she  understood  that  her  father  was  ill  even.  I 
was  there  the  day  before  they  started,  and  it  gave  me 
the  hump  to  watch  them.  No  one  owning  to  the  truth. 
Mrs.  Blake's  eyes  as  large  as  plates,  and  Horace  flash- 
ing lights  out  of  his  like  danger-signals,  while  he  talked, 
talked,  talked  of  the  play  that  he  would  finish  over 
there,  and  about  Trix's  hats  and  coats  and  skirts. 
The  lovely  Trix  to  the  fore  all  the  time,  hapless  infant. 
How  her  mother  could  allow  it  beats  me. " 

That  was  all  that  interested  Tempest  in  their  talk. 
He  was  left  wondering  how  to  see  Mrs.  Blake  again. 


XIII 

BUT    WHEN    YOU    FORGIVE? 

QTEPHEN  TEMPEST  need  not  have  been  anx- 
O  ious.  With  Kate  it  had  been  a  case  of  friend- 
ship at  first  sight.  There  was  a  genuine  kindness,  a 
power  of  sympathy  in  Stephen,  that  made  him  attract- 
ive to  most  people.  In  her  usual  course  of  life  she  was 
not  impulsive,  but  everything  about  her  was  unusual 
now.  She  was  not  long  in  finding  out  the  little  there 
was  to  know  about  Stephen  Tempest.  The  evening 
they  first  met,  her  hostess  had  explained  him. 

"Isn't  he  delightful?  I'm  so  glad  you  felt  the 
charm.  I  '11  tell  you  all  about  him.  His  people  are 
old-fashioned  small  county  people  in  Norfolk.  His 
father,  who  died  last  year,  wrote  the  most  delight- 
ful essays.  And  I  'm  told  Stephen  is  very  like  him. 
Stephen  got  a  scholarship  for  Eton  and  another  for 
New  College,  and  he  took  a  first  in  Greats.  The 
eldest  brother  is  in  Canada,  and  the  mother  looks 
after  the  old  house  and  property.  Both  the  sisters 
were  older  and  married  some  time  ago,  and  now 
Stephen  has  made  a  real  success  with  his  Life  of 
Nortondale.  He  is  a  barrister,  but  I  think  the  writing 
will  have  to  pay  his  way. " 

It  was  all  quite  ordinary,  though  above  the  average 
no  doubt.  Kate  was  more  accustomed  to  the  extra- 
ordinary than  to  the  ordinary,  and  ordinary  things 
were  very  restful  to  her.  Stephen  was  the  sort  of  man 
that  schools  and  universities  and  families  want  to  turn 

93 


94  Horace    BlaKe 

out.  Horace  and  most  of  his  friends  were  not  at  all 
what  any  sane  system  would  be  intended  to  produce. 
But  there  was  also  something  in  Tempest's  nature 
that  the  most  admirable  system  could  not  produce — 
something  that  drew  the  hungry  soul  of  Blake's  wife 
to  his.  Sometimes  in  middle  life  we  rest  on  a  nature 
that  has  not  yet  been  tested,  whereas  young  people 
look  more  warily  for  support  to  those  that  have  stood 
the  stress. 

Kate's  instinct  that  Stephen  was  rather  simple  as  to 
evil  was  a  true  one.  He  knew  good  far  better. 

She  wrote  and  asked  Stephen  to  come  and  see  her, 
and  they  had  tea  together  in  a  quiet  corner  of  the  club 
drawing-room. 

They  discussed  biography.  Kate  had  now  read 
Stephen's  successful  specimen  of  it,  and  she  had  been 
thoroughly  satisfied.  She  liked  the  book  for  its  can- 
dour and  thoroughness.  Besides,  the  writer  was  keen, 
and  he  took,  if  not  infinite,  immense  pains.  It  was  a 
cultivated  mind,  and  the  preoccupations  of  culture 
often  prevent  a  man  from  feeling  the  necessity  for  a 
clear  view  of  ultimate  realities.  He  was  dimly  trying 
to  get  a  reasoned  basis  for  the  artistic  things  that 
appealed  to  him;  but  he  was  more  occupied  with  the 
artistic  things  in  themselves  than  with  the  metaphysics 
needed  to  explain  them.  Both  his  artistic  precision 
and  his  rather  fluid,  mental  view  of  the  universe  made 
it  easy  for  him  to  keep  off  the  corners  of  Kate's  bigotry. 
He  could  point  out  fresh  beauties,  fresh  even  to  her, 
in  Blake's  works,  and  he  did  not  come  to  close  quarters 
as  to  subjects  on  which  they  must  have  disagreed. 
He  had  no  sympathy  with  violence  or  destruction ;  he 
could  smile  at  cant  and  humbug  when  she  could  only 
speak  of  them  with  triumphant  bitterness.  But  when 


Horace    BlaKe  95 

Tempest  tried  to  get  her  to  support  his  theory  that 
Blake's  destructive  work  was  only  the  prelude  to  his 
constructive,  he  got  nothing  from  her.  To  her  de- 
struction was  the  main  part  of  the  business.  She 
had  been  educated  to  appreciate  destructive  work. 
Her  father  had  been  a  scholarly,  refined  recluse,  but 
he,  too,  had  had  the  zeal  of  a  crusader  against  shams 
and  false  faiths.  Only  Kate's  father  had  lived  on  a 
very  different  plane  from  Horace.  He  had  been  in  his 
day  likened  to  the  "saint  of  rationalism."  Horace 
had  been  his  pupil  before  he  was  Kate's  lover,  but 
Horace  had  a  very  different  nature ;  he  had  known  the 
things  against  which  St.  John  Coniston  revolted  in  a 
way  quite  different  from  that  in  which  the  scientist 
had  known  them.  There  was  a  feverish  energy  in  his 
repudiations ;  and  before  he  died  his  father-in-law  had 
shocks  and  disgusts  that  went  unuttered  to  his  grave. 
Certainly,  towards  the  end  his  experience  of  his  son- 
in-law  changed  his  tone  not  a  little.  He  became  more 
respectful  towards  traditional  beliefs.  This  change 
had  no  effect  on  Kate,  who  had  never  looked  back 
from  his  earlier  teaching, — to  live  with  courage  and 
without  illusions  was  her  ideal ;  to  be  virtuous  had  been 
her  father's  practice  and  her  own. 

Rather  suddenly,  after  a  silence  in  the  midst  of  their 
talk,  Kate  asked  Stephen  if  he  were  a  Christian. 

" Oh,  yes, "  he  answered ;  "my  people  are  all  Christ- 
ians. Not  that  my  grandfather  would  acknowledge 
me  as  a  Christian,  or  that  I  could  be  bothered  with  the 
dogmas  that  absorbed  his  cantankerous  old  heart." 

"You  take  the  ethical  side  alone?"  Kate's  voice 
was  unsympathetic  to  a  degree. 

"I  have  found  great  help  in  the  Gospel,  and  even  in 


96  Horace    BlaKe 

Church  services,  since  I  was  a  boy,"  said  Stephen 
simply. 

"To  me  the  ethics  are  immoral;  take  the  Atone- 
ment, for  instance." 

Stephen  was  uncomfortable.  Her  tone  was  harsh 
now,  and  he  had  not  yet  settled  precisely  what  he 
thought  on  these  certainly  difficult  points. 

"I  believe,"  he  said,  "that  theologians  have  wor- 
ried at  all  these  questions  until  the  early  Christians 
would  not  know  them  again." 

"The  forgiveness  of  sins,"  pursued  Kate  with 
intense  antagonism. 

"You  agree  with  the  dramatist, "  said  Stephen,  who 
wished  to  change  the  subject,  "'Forgiveness  is  a 
beggar's  refuge, — we  must  all  pay  our  own  debts. ' ' 

"Heartily,"  said  Kate. 

Stephen  frowned  in  a  puzzled  way. 

"But  when  you  forgive  things  yourself,"  he  said, 
"you  do  not  feel  immoral?" 

He  was  not  thinking  of  her,  but  of  some  small 
experience  of  his  own.  He  saw  her  flush  as  she  turned 
quickly  away.  When  she  looked  round  there  was  a 
different  light  in  her  face. 

"That  is  true,"  she  said  gently,  and  they  both 
changed  the  conversation  a  little  quickly,  a  little 
eagerly,  as  if  the  ground  they  stood  on  was  slippery. 
But  he  had  no  suspicion  then  that  his  companion  had 
had  so  large  an  experience  of  that  act  of  forgiveness. 

They  returned  after  that  to  the  ethics  of  biography, 
and  there  Stephen  knew  his  own  thoughts  well.  It 
was  probably  during  that  talk  that  it  flashed  on  Kate's 
mind  for  the  first  time  that  Stephen  might  prove,  if 
not  the  ideal  biographer  for  whom  she  had  been  half- 
consciously  in  search,  at  least  a  sympathetic  as  well  as 


Horace    BlaKe  97 

&  capable  one.  She  had  rejected  in  her  own  mind 
much  more  distinguished  men,  and  men  who  knew 
Horace  well.  There  had  been  something  against 
nearly  all  of  them :  either  they  were  too  full  of  their 
own  theories  and  themselves,  or  they  were  unsympa- 
thetic and  people  she  could  never  work  with.  By  the 
time  he  left  her  she  had  put  Stephen  down  on  the  list 
of  possible  biographers. 

That  evening  Kate  received  the  mass  of  untidy 
papers  on  which  Horace  had  scribbled  the  last  act  of 
the  last  play — the  astonishing  result  of  the  three  days 
of  frantic  energy  which  she,  too,  believed  to  be  the  last 
flare.  She  was  giddy  while  she  read  it,  with  excite- 
ment and  admiration,  but  she  had  also  some  moments 
of  uncertainty.  Was  the  violence,  the  absence  of 
reticence,  as  fine  as  the  suggestiveness  of  his  other 
work?  Was  it  far  the  greatest  thing  he  had  done, 
or  was  it  a  kind  of  over-dramatic  magic-lantern 
exaggeration  of  all  that  had  gone  before?  It  would 
be  futile,  of  course,  to  show  it  to  the  censor  a  mile  off ; 
it  must  be  published  in  book  form,  as  Horace  had  said, 
and  in  time  the  public  would  force  it  on  to  the  stage. 

She  sat  reading,  her  hands  pressed  on  her  forehead, 
her  elbows  supported  on  the  writing-table  in  the  li- 
brary of  her  club.  Silence  was  absolute :  only  one  other 
member  was  there,  studying  her  evening  paper  as  if  it 
were  a  duty  she  must  perform  to  the  public.  In  the 
midst  of  sedate,  sober  comfort  sat  Kate,  intoxicated, 
over- wrought,  actually  trembling  as  she  turned  the 
pages  of  the  curious  writing  so  familiar  to  her.  The 
air  was  thick  with  the  things  she  was  reading.  If  the 
other  member  had  been  of  a  high-strung  tempera- 
ment, some  kind  of  thought  transference  must  have 
troubled  her  also. 


98  Horace    BlaKe 

At  the  same  hour  Horace  was  saying  to  the  cure  of 
St.  Jean  des  Pluies  with  a  little  shrug: 

"That  was  my  spiritual  experience  on  the  F£te  Dieu, 
M.  le  Curs'. " 


XIV 
CAN'T  THEY  LET  ME  DIE  IN  PEACE? 

NOTHING  in  the  letters  from  St.  Jean  des  Pluies 
betrayed  to  Kate  the  state  of  exhaustion  to 
which  Horace  had  been  reduced  during  the  three  days 
in  which  he  was  writing  the  last  act  of  The  Burning 
Bush.  Each  evening  he  had  sent  her  a  postcard  on 
which  was  scrawled  "Working  well,"  or  "Getting  on 
with  work,"  and  then  "Shall  finish  to-night."  He 
had  suddenly  forbidden  Roberts  to  write  to  Mrs. 
Blake,  and  he  did  not  write  again  himself  for  two  or 
three  days  after  that,  and,  by  the  time  he  wrote,  he 
had  entered  upon  a  new  phase  of  thought  and  feeling 
as  to  his  own  condition.  He  had  become  deadly  tired 
of  the  farce  of  pretending  that  he  was  only  at  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies  for  a  few  weeks'  rest  before  resuming 
his  normal  life  at  home.  He  knew  that  such  an 
attitude  was  now  almost  grotesque.  The  night  after 
his  visit  to  the  cure  he  owned  to  Roberts,  and  soon  after 
to  Trix,  that  he  was  very  ill  indeed.  This  acknowl- 
edgment in  itself  brought  a  sort  of  peace ;  as  every  ac- 
knowledgment of  truth  does  at  first  bring  peace;  and 
in  this  calmer  condition  of  mind  the  despairing  fear 
which  had  made  him  reckless  in  his  disregard  of  orders 
or  advice  really  diminished.  Facing  the  fact  that  he 
was  really  very  ill,  that  he  was  in  the  grip  of  a  terrible 
disease,  he  began  to  tell  himself  that  his  case  could  not 
possibly  be  called  hopeless.  He  had  seen  men  quite 
as  ill,  even  more  ill  than  he  was,  get  back  to  normal 

99 


ioo  Horace   BlaKe 

conditions  of  life  and  action.  This  disease  had  in  it  a 
most  mysterious  element  which  puzzled  the  doctors. 
Out  of  their  very  ignorance  there  was  ground  for 
hope.  His  imagination  had  fastened  on  the  con- 
demnation he  had  seen  in  the  eyes  of  Sir  Thomas 
Goodstone  and  the  other  doctors — a  condemnation 
conveyed  in  their  looks,  their  manner,  their  whole 
attitude,  while  their  lips  had  said  smooth  things.  He 
had  tried  in  vain  to  persuade  himself  and  all  about 
him  that  he  had  understood  nothing  beyond  what  was 
told  him  in  so  many  words ;  he  had  tried  to  occupy  his 
mind  with  anything  that  could  make  him  forget  the 
state  of  his  body.  It  was  impossible  to  ignore  that 
state  now,  and  he  began  to  realise  and  to  curse  the 
excessive  rashness  with  which  he  had  thrown  away  his 
chances  of  getting  better.  He  was  worse,  but  then 
he  had  made  himself  worse  by  flatly  disobeying  the 
order  to  rest,  by  disregarding  everything  that  Roberts 
had  said  to  him  that  did  not  fit  in  with  his  own  wishes. 
He  had  not  given  himself  a  chance,  but  he  would  give 
himself  every  chance  now.  Roberts  had  given  warn- 
ing and  no  wonder;  but  perhaps  Roberts  would  retract 
that  warning  if  he  saw  the  change  on  which  Horace  was 
now  determined.  He  bent  his  will  and  his  imagination 
towards  the  fight  with  the  disease.  That  should  now 
be  his  real  occupation,  and  he  would  allow  nothing  to 
interfere  with  it.  He  saw  the  dire  necessity  of  self- 
control  if  any  treatment  was  to  be  of  the  slightest  use. 
The  very  intensity  with  which  he  determined  to  be 
calm  and  cheerful  made  him  begin  to  feel  as  if  he  were 
so  already.  He  would  try  to  be  interested  in  the  little 
details  of  his  daily  life  with  Trix  and  make  the  best  of 
everything.  Such  a  condition  of  mind  would  be  of  real 
use  in  helping  the  forces  of  health  in  their  hard  fight. 


Horace   BlaKe  101 

After  this  was  resolved  upon,  Horace  wrote  again  to 
his  wife  and  the  letter  was  full  of  the  great  change,  of 
his  absolute  obedience  to  the  doctor's  orders,  and  of 
how  he  was  feeling  better  already  in  consequence. 
Roberts,  with  full  permission,  also  wrote  in  the  same 
sense  to  Mrs.  Blake,  and  so  did  Trix;  Roberts  pro- 
fessionally and  Trix  in  all  simplicity  were  bent  on 
helping  to  produce  this  atmosphere  of  confidence  and 
cheerfulness.  No  good  nurse  is  without  the  power  of 
suggestion,  and  Roberts  was  now  employing  his  to  the 
full  in  his  treatment  of  Horace.  It  was  not  unnatural 
that  he  supposed  that  the  fact  of  his  having  given 
notice  had  produced  an  improvement  in  the  manners 
of  his  charge.  He  still  told  himself  that  he  meant  to 
leave  before  very  long,  but  now  that  Mr.  Blake  was 
more  reasonable  and  was  doing  some  credit  to  the  care 
bestowed  on  him,  he  was  in  no  great  hurry  to  go  back 
to  England.  Not  that  he  could  ever  like  his  patient ; 
indeed,  he  had  disliked  him  almost  from  the  first. 
He  could  have  said,  too,  that  he  had  known  many  a 
sick  man  nasty  when  in  pain,  but  none  quite  so  nasty 
as  this  one.  However,  one  evening  a  new  aspect  of 
Horace  had  no  little  effect  on  the  view  Roberts  took  of 
him. 

Blake  had  gone  down  to  the  village  in  search  of  dis- 
traction and  found  it  in  choosing  some  of  the  Quim- 
per  pottery  that  was  sold  by  a  quaint  old  woman  in  a 
tiny,  ill-lit  shop.  Trix  coming  up  from  the  shore 
hurried  to  join  him  and  put  her  arm  through  his. 
While  walking  she  had  been  thinking  a  little  bitterly 
that  her  mother  ought  to  be  there;  she  could  not 
understand  such  a  desertion.  She  had  never  been 
drawn  into  close  intimacy  with  her  mother;  at  times 


IQ2  Horace    BlaKe 

she  had  almost  felt  as  if  she  were  being  kept  aloof. 
Hitherto,  being,  like  most  undeveloped  people,  prone 
to  accept  suggestion,  she  had  taken  her  aunt's  implied 
view  that  Mrs.  Blake  was  absorbed  in  her  work  as  the 
great  man's  wife;  but  now  that  theory  could  not  fit 
the  position  any  more.  Trix  felt  like  the  Swiss 
Guard  at  the  Tuileries : — the  only  truly  loyal  sentinel 
companion  and  friend  to  the  sick  man.  The  rdle  had 
its  attractions. 

"I  have  got  a  new  idea,  Trix,"  said  Horace  cheer- 
fully as  they  moved  slowly  on.  "I  am  getting  tired 
of  the  boat  of  our  grasping  friend;  I  want  to  move 
about  on  shore.  A  fiacre  would  knock  me  to  pieces, 
and  there  's  not  a  decent  motor  to  be  got  in  these 
benighted  parts.  My  idea  is  to  ask  your  mother  to 
send  us  out  a  really  good  motor;  she  must  get  advice 
as  to  which  is  the  smoothest  that  is  made. " 

"Oh,  father!  what  fun — if  there  is  one  that  will 
run  quite  smoothly  enough."  Her  white  forehead 
wrinkled  anxiously  for  a  moment. 

"Roberts  believes  that  a  really  good  motor  shakes 
no  more  than  a  bath-chair.  We  could  then  at  last  see 
the  country,  and  now  that  it  is  getting  hotter  the  air 
would  do  me  good." 

Trix  was  enchanted,  and  suggested  half  a  dozen 
places  farther  south  that  she  had  been  longing  to  see. 

As  they  neared  the  hotel,  talking  eagerly,  they 
noticed  Roberts  in  conversation  with  a  stranger. 

"A  journalist,"  said  Horace,  "prying  for  an  inter- 
view; the  type  is  unmistakable.  I  wonder  what  Mr. 
Roberts  is  so  kind  as  to  tell  him?" 

Horace  was  right  in  deciding  that  the  stranger  was  a 
journalist.  And  it  was,  in  fact,  the  visit  of  the 
journalist  that  made  Roberts  retract  rather  humbly 


Horace  BlaKe  103 

his  notice  of  throwing  up  the  care  of  Horace  Blake. 
The  press  had  a  positive  fascination  for  him;  he  had 
always  enjoyed  press  allusions  to  the  men  of  position 
whom  he  had  nursed ;  he  had  supplied  little  paragraphs 
himself  as  to  their  health  and  their  movements.  He  was 
quite  astonished  to  find  that  Blake  was  worthy  of  a  great 
London  paper  sending  a  man  all  the  way  from  Paris  to 
St.  Jean  des  Pluies  to  obtain  an  interview  with  him. 

He  told  Horace  with  a  certain  beam  of  satisfaction 
that  Mr.  Purl  was  asking  for  an  interview. 

"Can't  they  even  let  me  die  in  peace?"  asked 
Horace  a  little  dramatically,  and  he  was  at  last  a 
hero  to  his  man-nurse. 

To  Purl's  indignation  and  Roberts's  surprise, 
Horace  refused  to  see  him — absolutely  refused!  So 
Roberts  was  interviewed  instead  and  gave  the  account 
of  Blake's  health,  which  appeared  shortly  after,  and 
which  was  dismissed  with  incredulity  by  anyone  who 
had  seen  the  sick  man  just  lately  in  London. 

It  was  a  great  effort  on  Blake's  part  to  make  that 
refusal,  and  the  true  cause  of  his  making  it  was  that  he 
had  become  uncertain  what  he  would  reply  if  he  were 
questioned  as  to  his  new  play.  He  was  longing  to  talk 
of  it,  longing  to  give  it  the  first  advertisement,  but  he 
could  n't  do  it.  When  Purl  had  left,  he  suddenly  told 
Roberts  that  he  would  see  the  man  after  all.  Roberts 
wanted  to  telegraph  to  the  junction  to  stop  him,  but 
this  Horace  would  not  allow. 

A  few  days  followed  which  were  spent  by  Horace  in 
carrying  out  the  determination  to  live  entirely  by  rule. 
The  great  idea  was  maintained  that  now  there  was  to 
be  a  complete  change;  he  explained  to  Roberts,  and 
Roberts  constantly  encouraged  the  notion,  that  it  was 
his  own  fault  that  he  was  not  much  better  and  stronger. 


104  Horace  BlaKe 

Now  he  would  be  "a  really  good  boy  "  and  do  what  he 
was  told.  Roberts  and  Trix  persevered  in  produc- 
ing this  atmosphere  of  confidence  and  cheerfulness. 
The  symptoms  continued  to  improve  and  each  slight 
improvement  was  registered  and  discussed  with 
Roberts  and  made  much  of,  until  Horace  began  to 
boast  a  little  to  one  or  two  visitors  to  the  hotel  whom 
he  had  decided  to  find  amusing  as  there  was  no  one 
else  to  be  got.  These  visitors  did  not  show  perfect 
tact  in  response,  but  then,  of  course,  they  knew 
nothing  about  the  case.  Two  small  happenings  sur- 
prised Roberts  about  this  time,  and  probably  surprised 
Horace  himself  almost  as  much.  Blake  was  sitting  in 
the  front  garden  of  the  hotel  before  going  to  bed,  to 
which  he  always  went  now  before  his  dinner,  when  he 
saw  one  of  the  servants  rather  roughly  turning  away 
a  beggar  from  the  gate. 

"  What  did  she  want?  "  he  asked  the  man  in  French, 
and  received  for  answer  that  she  was  no  better  than 
she  should  be. 

An  odd  frown  settled  on  his  face.  A  good  many 
people  were  no  better  than  they  should  be,  he  told 
Roberts  an  hour  later. 

"Go  to  the  cure  to-morrow,"  he  went  on,  "find  out 
if  he  knows  her,  and  if  so  what  can  be  done  for  her. 
Take  four  louis,  only  don't  let  him  come  and  bother 
me  here." 

Horace  was  nasty  in  his  manner  to  the  servant  who 
had  turned  the  beggar  away,  and  thereupon  the  man 
hated  him;  Blake  could  be  quite  odious  to  those  he 
disliked  and  could  convey  his  dislike  with  a  detestable 
contempt  in  his  big  eyes. 

There  was  a  small  table  in  Horace's  bedroom  on 
which  lay  various  albums  that  he  had  forbidden  Trix 


Horace    BlaKe  105 

to  open.  After  dinner  he  used  to  amuse  himself  with 
one  or  other  of  them,  unless  he  had  a  good  novel  on 
hand.  Roberts,  though  no  "plaster  saint,"  had  his 
own  standards  and  he  disliked  those  albums  intensely. 
One  night  Horace  noticed  the  look  on  his  face  as  he 
brought  the  books  to  the  bedside,  and  his  manner  of 
dropping  them,  as  if  he  were  dropping  something 
nauseous. 

Horace  was  lying  passively  on  his  pillows ;  the  mys- 
terious element  of  inquiry  and  receptivity  came 
suddenly  into  the  face  that  had  been  unusually  blank. 
Then  he  looked  excited. 

"  I  've  half  a  mind  to  clear  that  much  out. "  Then, 
lifting  the  book  on  his  knees,  he  dragged  out  a  photo- 
graph and  tore  it  in  two. 

"Come  on,  Roberts,"  he  cried,  "tear  and  cut  up 
that  red  book — see  which  of  us  goes  quickest."  He 
looked  very  strange  at  that  moment.  His  eyes 
glittered,  his  thin  hands  grabbed  and  tore  nervously; 
the  jacket  of  his  pyjamas  was  unfastened  and  showed 
all  his  wasted  chest.  The  bed  was  in  disorder,  pillows, 
blankets  and  sheets  thrown  about,  and  the  litter  of 
the  torn  cards  and  papers  lay  in  wild  confusion. 

"Hercules  turned  a  river  into  a  stable,"  he  said  to 
Roberts,  as  if  imparting  interesting  information, 
"but  there's  no  river  available  in  this  case  and 
nothing  short  of  a  river,  I  suppose,  could  do  the  job. 
Still,  a  little  tidying  up  does  no  harm." 

"We  '11  have  a  fire, "  he  said  a  moment  later,  and  he 
seemed  like  a  boy  watching  the  weeds  burn  as  Roberts 
coaxed  the  stove  into  its  work  of  destruction.  But 
weeds  burn  so  easily  compared  to  prints  and  photo- 
graphs and  feuilletons.  Then  the  stove  smoked  and 
Horace  coughed;  he  suddenly  changed. 


io6  Horace    BlaKe 

"You  need  n't  burn  any  more  here;  take  it  all  away 
and  destroy  it  in  your  own  room." 

Roberts  had  some  difficulty  in  extinguishing  the 
burning  papers  in  the  stove.  Horace  had  put  his  feet 
out  of  bed  and  was  sitting  up.  Roberts  left  the  half- 
burnt  papers  in  a  heap  on  the  tiles  and  lifted  Horace's 
shrunken  limbs  on  to  the  bed  and  helped  him  to  cover 
them  with  his  pyjamas.  A  slight  smile  curled  the 
pale  lips. 

"They  had  ceased  to  amuse  me, "  he  said;  and  then 
added  with  a  half -laugh:  "  It  is  our  vices  that  leave  us, 
not  we  who  leave  our  vices. " 

Roberts  again  felt  him  to  be  unpleasant,  but  he  was 
now  determined  to  make  the  best  of  him. 

The  passengers  on  the  boat  from  Southampton  were 
annoyed  at  being  kept  waiting  while  a  motor  was 
disembarked.  There  was  a  little  pomp  and  excite- 
ment about  the  landing  of  the  motor,  it  was  so  su- 
premely new  and  smart  and  effective.  It  stood  for  all 
that  was  rich  and  successful  in  the  eyes  of  a  group  of 
workmen  on  the  quay.  It  was  evidently  to  supply 
further  pleasure  to  "one  of  the  animals  of  million- 
aires" who  were  infinitely  happy  in  their  self -grati- 
fications at  the  expense  of  those  who  laboured  for  a 
bare  subsistence.  It  occupied  the  greater  part  of  the 
small  steamer  that  plied  between  St.  Malo  and  the 
town  nearest  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies.  Roberts  met 
the  mechanic  who  had  brought  it  over  at  the  pier,  and 
thoroughly  enjoyed  seeing  the  splendid  thing  receiving 
the  attentions  of  the  boatmen,  who  had  a  more 
benevolent  view  of  wealthy  visitors  than  the  workmen 
at  St.  Malo.  It  was  not  the  least  upset  by  the  crossing 
and  it  was  soon  brought  in  triumph  to  the  little  hotel 


Horace    BlaKe  107 

in  St.  Jean  des  Pluies.  Horace  was  not  to  go  down- 
stairs any  earlier  than  usual.  The  fervour  for  rule 
and  discipline  was  still  maintained,  only  he  could 
admire  it  from  the  window.  Even  from  the  road 
anybody  might  see  that  it  was  not  the  face  of  the  typi- 
cal millionaire  that  looked  out  on  his  new  possession. 
Roberts  and  Trix  were  so  fully  occupied  with  the 
machine  that  they  had  no  fresh  impression  of  the  face 
at  the  window.  The  kindly  American  and  another 
visitor  who  had  come  out  to  look  at  the  exquisite, 
panting,  dark-hued  thing  in  the  road,  glanced  up  at 
the  window,  and  then  significantly  at  each  other. 
One  of  them  bent  down  to  feel  the  tyre  nearest  him. 
"A  good  make;  I  guess  he  '11  hardly  wear  it  out. " 
There  was  a  little  crowd  to  see  the  start  in  the 
evening,  and  Horace  quite  enjoyed  the  fuss.  He 
looked  and  felt  less  ghastly  thin  in  his  fur  coat,  which 
he  had  put  on  as  a  fresh  breeze  was  blowing  off  the 
water.  The  drive  into  Dinan  was  glorious,  the  deep 
green  country  was  a  wonderful  refreshment,  and  there 
came  flashes  of  the  view  of  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
rivers  in  the  world.  Three  quarters  of  an  hour  passed 
in  sheer  enjoyment,  and  then,  almost  before  he  knew 
it,  Horace  was  beginning  to  exert  his  will  to  keep  down 
the  consciousness  of  a  gnawing  pain.  Roberts,  sitting 
by  the  mechanic,  was  in  all  his  glory,  Trix  was  in  bliss. 
It  was  a  tough  fight  before  he  let  them  know  that  the 
motion  was  too  much  for  him.  Instantly  the  nearest 
possible  spot  in  the  road  was  taken  for  turning  back. 
The  return  was  terrible ;  from  the  moment  that  he  had 
to  give  up  and  go  back  Blake  broke  down.  Swiftly, 
surely,  they  made  for  the  hotel  as  fast  as  possible. 
They  lifted  him  out  at  the  end  of  an  appalling  forty 
minutes,  during  which  the  helpless  Trix  was  crying  as 


IO8  Horace    IMaKe 

if  her  heart  would  break.  Roberts  simply  carried  him 
up-stairs  like  a  child.  It  was  a  ghastly  burden  he  laid 
on  the  bed.  Then  he  gave  more  morphia  than  he  had 
ventured  to  give  before. 

The  face  of  the  American  who  had  seen  Blake 
carried  in  was  white  with  horror  as  he  hurried  to  find 
the  manageress  to  beg  her  to  come  to  Trix,  who  was  in 
the  garden  making  perfectly  useless  efforts  to  become 
calm.  The  brisk,  efficient  Frenchwoman  was  better 
for  Trix,  as  he  had  supposed,  than  any  too  sympathetic 
lady  visitor.  Roberts  cursed  his  own  folly  in  having 
allowed  Blake  to  get  into  the  motor,  but  he  had  so 
often  found  that  it  was  far  the  least  trying  form  of 
motion  for  a  sick  man.  That  night  he  explained  this 
in  self-defence  to  the  American. 

"It  may  have  been  a  chance  attack, "  suggested  the 
latter. 

"Possibly,"  said  Roberts;  "he  had  been  very  free 
from  pain  for  some  time. " 

"Say, "  observed  the  other,  "Horace  Blake  goes  up 
and  down  the  scale  farther  and  quicker  than  men  of 
less  imagination.  I  always  wished  to  be  a  dramatist, 
but  I  conclude  that  a  man  pays  in  himself  for  the 
privilege." 

"And  those  who  have  him  in  charge  pay  too,"  said 
Roberts  grimly.  He  was  dreading  the  work  before 
him. 

"Curious,"  continued  the  analytical  American  to 
himself  after  Roberts,  who  was  not  analytical,  had  left 
him,  "  you  'd  think  that  when  a  man  was  as  ill  as  that 
he  'd  be  too  far  gone  for  the  imaginative  side  to  hurt 
him  much.  But  I  conclude  that  Blake  will  make  the 
worst  of  dying  because  he'll  realise  all  round  more 
than  most  of  us  would." 


XV 

NOT   VANQUISHED 

A  NY  man  or  woman  who  hated  Horace  Blake  might 
/~\  have  had  a  very  lust  of  vengeance  satiated  if  he 
or  she  could  have  known  what  he  suffered  that  night. 
The  bodily  pain  grew  less;  the  morphia  dulled  his 
consciousness  for  a  time,  but  then  his  mind  became 
terribly  awake.  Physically,  though  the  pain  was  far 
less,  he  was  very  wretched ;  but  that  was  nothing  to  the 
agony  of  disillusion.  The  pain  had  been  in  a  different 
part  of  the  body  and  there  were  other  symptoms  of 
which  he  now  knew  the  meaning.  Roberts  had  made 
much  of  the  fact  that  the  pain  had  hitherto  been 
entirely  on  one  side — now  it  had  spread.  He  had 
made  Blake  think  too  much  of  the  improvement  in 
other  symptoms;  to-night  that  improvement  was  not 
only  not  maintained,  but  in  one  or  two  details  the 
same  symptoms  were  worse  than  they  had  been  yet. 
Roberts  had  not  understood  the  mind  with  which  he 
had  to  deal.  He  had  seen  the  real  value  of  any  fresh 
hope  in  this  case,  indeed,  Mr.  Blake's  state  had  shown 
a  surprising  improvement  during  his  sanguine  mood. 
But  the  very  keenness  with  which  Horace  had  studied 
his  own  case  involved  a  serious  danger  for  a  being  so 
cursed  with  the  gift  of  imagination.  At  a  touch  the 
pendulum  went  full  swing  in  the  opposite  direction. 
It  was  a  night  of  awful  fear,  horribly  embittered  by 
disappointment.  He  was  hateful  in  his  rage  and  scorn 
at  the  bubble  that  had  just  burst,  and  at  the  man  who 

109 


no  Horace    BlaKe 

had  helped  to  swell  it.  Any  attempt  to  reason  with 
him,  to  explain,  for  instance,  that  the  run  in  the  motor 
had  had  quite  probably  only  an  accidental  and  tempo- 
rarily bad  effect,  was  only  to  provoke  him  to  a  state  of 
miserable  exasperation  that  suggested  to  Roberts  for 
the  first  time  the  possibility  that  he  might  go  out  of 
his  mind.  He  resolved  to  write  to  Sir  Thomas  Good- 
stone  that  if  the  patient's  brain  became  affected,  he 
must  have  a  mental  nurse  to  help  him. 

Towards  morning  Blake  fell  asleep,  and  when  he 
woke  late  the  last  storm  of  rage  that  Roberts  ever 
witnessed  in  him  was  spent,  and  there  was  something 
awful  in  his  complete  silence. 

Trix  had  never  seen  him  like  this  before.  She  was 
disappointed  and  a  little  chagrined  at  his  total  in- 
attention to  her.  The  young  ministering  angel  had 
not  learned  to  follow  far  without  response.  He  paid 
no  heed  when  she  offered  to  read  to  him;  he  never 
noticed  when  she  sat  doing  nothing  but  waiting  to  be 
of  use  on  this  divine  morning,  with  the  sky  so  light 
and  one  gem  of  blue  sea  suggesting  what  the  rest  must 
be  like  that  lay  out  of  sight. 

At  last  he  told  her  abruptly  to  go  out,  nor  did  he 
see  her  again  till  the  evening. 

Roberts,  looking  in  a  little  later  in  the  morning, 
after  one  glance  at  Horace,  concluded  that  he  must 
be  in  great  bodily  pain. 

"I  will  bring  the  morphia,"  he  said.  Horace  let 
him  go  in  silence.  Why  not  morphia  for  this  mental 
agony  too?  But  when  Roberts  came  back,  Horace 
refused  it. 

"No,"  he  said,  "I  am  not  in  great  pain." 

Roberts  left  him,  and  Horace  lay  with  open  eyes 
fixed  on  vacancy. 


Horace   BlaKe  ill 

For  two  days  and  nights  there  was  little  apparent 
change  in  his  mental  condition,  and  he  did  not  seem  to 
the  man-nurse  to  be  materially  the  worse;  in  parti- 
cular the  pain,  which  was  not  acute,  only  affected  one 
side  as  it  had  done  before.  But  Blake  lay  on  his  bed 
most  of  those  two  days,  not  even  pretending  to  read; 
he  avoided  speaking  to  Roberts,  and  constantly  sent 
Trix  away  very  gently,  but  in  a  way  that  she  could  not 
resist.  The  fact  was  that  her  presence  only  added  to 
his  suffering. 

On  the  third  morning  his  face  horrified  Roberts 
afresh. 

At  moments  in  the  night  that  was  just  over,  Blake's 
anguish  had  passed  beyond  conscious  thought.  It  had 
been  merely  a  horrible  tearing  at  his  whole  being. 
Such  another  night,  he  thought,  would  drive  him  mad. 
He  had  felt  in  the  awful  stillness  as  if  he  must  be 
making  some  great  noise,  that  he  must  positively  con- 
trol himself  or  he  would  be  overheard.  But  he  knew 
now  in  the  daylight  that  he  had,  in  fact,  made  no 
sound. 

As  the  morning  wore  on  he  was  thinking  of  Trix. 
"If  she  knew  the  truth;  if  she  knew  what  I  am!" 
If  the  child  could  understand  what  he  was,  what  he 
had  done,  what  he  had  no  doubt  he  would  do  again 
if  life  had  to  come  over  again,  where  would  her  love 
for  him  be  then?  One  woman  who  had  known  too 
much  about  him  was  dead — had  died  of  knowing  him 
too  well,  he  told  himself.  All  his  life  fame,  success, 
work,  had  concealed  so  much  from  himself,  had  even 
helped  him  to  keep  to  an  external  view  of  Horace 
Blake.  There  had  always  been  people  to  praise  him, 
and  then  lately  Trix  had  come  to  love  him.  He  saw 


112  Horace    BlaKe 

her  through  the  window  go  down  the  garden,  a  great 
bitterness  in  his  face  as  he  watched  her. 
"How  will  she  bear  it  when  she  knows?" 
This  last  consolation  he  had  planned  for  himself, 
this  conquest  of  Trix's  affections,  had  begun  to  hurt 
him  terribly.  His  imagination  presented  the  contrast 
between  his  daughter's  ideal  of  him  and  the  reality  with 
much  of  the  intensity  that  had  always  been  the  secret 
of  his  force  in  literature.  Would  not  Trix  loathe  the 
real  Horace?  Was  it  not  loathsome  that  a  man  should 
have  lived  and  lied  like  that? 

It  was  the  third  night  after  the  drive  to  Dinan ;  the 
horrible  succession  of  ideas  that  seemed  to  have  fallen 
into  a  kind  of  rhythm  in  the  regularity  with  which 
they  succeeded  each  other  in  Horace's  mind  never 
ceased.  It  was  not  a  nightmare;  it  was  the  terrible 
clearness  of  sleeplessness.  One  after  another  they 
came.  First  the  fear  of  pain,  then  the  longing — the 
unspeakable  longing — for  one  year  at  least  of  life  and 
health,  then  the  fear  of  death,  then  the  thought  of 
Trix  after  his  death  if  she  should  come  to  know  the 
truth.  That  always  threw  him  back  on  his  past  life, 
and  there  followed  a  slow,  long  procession  of  memories 
over  which  he  had  no  control.  From  his  past  would 
arise  a  haunting  belief  in  God  as  the  avenger  which 
was  not  quenched  by  a  dreary  sense  of  unbelief  in 
the  creed  of  his  childhood.  Suddenly  he  would  loathe 
the  rotten  helplessness  of  his  will.  It  was  as  if  he 
realised  that  his  moral  being  had  no  kind  of  support  in 
itself ;  and  this  was  so  vivid  that  it  would  feel  as  if  the 
very  bed  that  held  his  body  had  something  of  the 
same  awful  instability.  Vainly  would  he  half  wel- 
come the  phantoms  of  an  unclean  imagination,  and 


Horace    BlaKe  113 

sink  so  low  as  to  regret  the  pleasure  that  they  could 
no  longer  excite.  Such  was  the  long  procession  of 
ideas  which  would  come  full  circle,  out  of  which 
there  seemed  to  be  no  escape.  Each  idea,  horrible  as 
it  was  hi  itself,  always  seemed  to  suggest  that  a  worse 
one  was  to  come  after  it.  Nothing  could  be  done  that 
was  of  any  good — he  found  himself  explaining  this  to 
his  own  consciousness — except  on  some  gigantic  scale, 
and  a  bruised  fly  was  as  equal  to  saving  a  great  world 
catastrophe  as  he  was  to  doing  anything  on  a  gigantic 
scale.  He  had  made  his  bed  years  ago  and  he  must  lie 
on  it. 

The  thought  of  what  he  had  promised  Kate  when 
Trix  was  a  small  child  worried  him,  worried  him  as  a 
cat  worries  a  mouse.  His  mind  tossed  about  under  it 
without  rinding  rest.  He  had  promised  that  he  would 
never  teach  Trix  evil,  never  teach  her  life,  never  take  a 
father's  rights.  What  must  Kate  have  realised  to  be 
true  of  him  before  exacting  such  a  promise?  To 
satisfy  her  he  had  said  hastily:  "I  '11  never  be  alone 
with  her  if  that  will  pacify  you."  It  was  the  view  of 
himself  that  that  had  implied  that  now  pressed  upon 
him.  All  the  success,  the  silly  press-cuttings  even, 
had  been  a  disguise  of  himself  in  his  own  thoughts, 
his  delight  in  his  work,  his  infinite  capacity  for  taking 
pains,  his  wish  to  satisfy  Kate's  ambitions  had  all 
made  up  a  figure  of  Horace  Blake  that  was  sufficient 
for  working  purposes  in  the  daytime  of  life.  Now 
he  was  just  himself  alone,  absolutely  alone.  And 
before  him  was  death,  agony,  with  none  of  his  fears 
or  susceptibilities  dulled  by  illness — rather  increased 
in  acuteness. 

He  remembered  a  passage  in  Gibbon  as  to  the 
sufferings  of  the  Romans  from  the  barbarians.  Gib- 


H4  Horace  BlaKe 

bon  said  that  the  horror  was  increased  by  the  exquisite 
sensibility  of  the  sufferers.  Extreme  sensibility!  how 
that  described  the  exposed  nerves  of  his  self -indulged 
mind  and  body!  It  was  no  doubt,  Horace's  strong 
gift  of  imagination  that  made  such  a  mental  agony  as 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  few  have  to  suffer. 

"Sleep,  sleep,  sleep,"  he  said,  not  knowing  that  he 
did  so. 

He  got  up  and  lit  his  candle,  and  then  feebly  moved 
to  the  switch  of  the  electric  light  and  flooded  the  room 
with  cold  clearness.  He  took  his  watch  out  of  a 
drawer.  It  was  one  o'clock.  He  went  back  to  bed, 
and  sat  up  leaning  against  the  brass  bar  behind  him. 
The  ticking  of  his  watch,  though  it  had  been  put  away 
again,  was  loud  in  the  stillness,  but  for  once  he  liked  it. 
"I  can't  be  in  Hell  already, "  he  said  to  himself.  "I 
wish  someone  would  move;  how  horribly  well  they 
sleep." 

He  seemed  to  see  all  the  healthy  figures  under  that 
roof,  so  full  of  life  in  their  sleep,  and  he  fancied  them 
waking,  stretching  themselves,  getting  up,  doing 
things,  while  he  would  go  on  just  the  same  with  the 
same  thoughts,  and  the  same  miserable  death-in-life, 
getting  worse  and  worse.  He  wished  he  could  at  least 
hear  other  people  moving.  He  wondered  if  the  people 
in  the  hotel,  if  the  waiters,  the  fat  cook,  pitied  him. 
If  they  did  it  was  no  good,  it  could  not  come  near 
enough  to  be  any  good.  He  tried  to  say  things  to 
himself  such  as  some  kind  man  in  his  own  world  would 
have  tried  to  say. 

' '  After  all,  I  may  get  better.  I  might  do  more  to  get 
well ;  there  are  doctors  besides  the  men  I  saw  in  London. 
I  may  be  going  to  live  a  little  longer;  after  all,  I  have 
done  good  work ;  after  all,  the  world  will  call  me  great. " 


Horace   BlaKe  115 

He  made  a  great  effort  to  fill  his  mind  with  this 
last  thought,  and  to  help  himself  to  do  so  he  got  out  of 
bed  again,  and  slowly  holding  on  to  the  furniture  as  he 
passed,  he  reached  the  writing-table,  and  took  up  a 
huge,  heavy  scrap-book  of  press-cuttings.  As  he  did 
so,  he  seemed  to  see  all  the  wretched  little  scraps,  with 
little  swellings  from  the  paste,  stuck  all  over  the  walls 
of  the  room.  He  lifted  it  up ;  he  was  determined  to  get 
back  to  bed  with  it,  and  to  read  them  steadily  to  keep 
his  mind  full  of  them.  He  stepped  forward,  and  then 
the  book  slipped  from  his  hands,  and  fell  two  feet  in 
front  of  him,  while  pieces  of  blue  paper  with  the 
newest  cuttings  on  them  dropped  about  on  the  ground. 
He  bent  to  pick  it  up,  but  he  could  not.  Then  he 
knew  that  there  was  no  refuge,  no  distraction ;  he 
looked  across  the  room  at  his  tumbled  bed,  as  if  it 
had  been  the  rack  on  which  he  was  to  be  stretched. 

And  then,  as  there  was  nothing  else  to  help  him,  in 
utter  terror  of  being  alone  any  longer,  Horace  knelt 
down  at  the  writing-table  and  cried  for  mercy — even 
as  a  dog  would  cry  if  it  were  able,  to  be  spared  pain. 
It  appeared  to  him  at  the  moment  that  God  might 
really  spurn  him,  that  this  tortured,  unclean  human 
animal  might  be  impossibly  repulsive  in  a  great  light 
of  absolute  truth.  In  his  despairing  cry  to  God  he 
first  knew  for  certain  that  he  believed.  After  that 
there  rose  in  him  a  spark  of  generosity  that  demanded 
love  and  forgiveness  rather  than  cessation  of  suffering. 
It  seemed  as  if  in  response  to  that  last  appeal  his  soul 
was  transfixed  with  a  new  agony.  In  the  same 
instant,  with  all  the  strength  of  his  weak  will,  he 
abandoned  his  whole  being  to  welcome  this  sense  of  an 
infinite  anguish.  He  was  then  astonished  to  find  the 
pain  made  bearable  by  the  infusion  of  a  mysterious  joy. 


Ii6  Horace    BlaKe 

All  the  poets,  and  all  the  saints,  make  mock  of  the 
divisions  of  time.  Perhaps  the  action  of  the  soul 
while  Horace  knelt  against  the  table  was  as  long, 
as  full  of  movement — who  has  words  to  express  these 
things? — as  the  whole  of  his  life  up  to  that  moment. 
The  impressions  Roberts  received  during  the  number 
of  times  the  clock  ticked  while  Horace  was  kneeling 
in  the  next  room  might  be  said  to  amount  to  this — he 
thought,  of  course,  being  a  nurse,  before  he  was  half 
awake,  that  somebody  wanted  him ;  then  as  no  sound 
followed  the  fall  of  the  album,  being  wider  awake,  he 
began  to  think  that  the  noise  had  been  part  of  a  dream. 
He  certainly  had  been  dreaming.  Of  course,  if  that 
were  the  case,  he  could  go  to  sleep  again — a  very 
pleasant  conclusion.  He  listened,  and  not  a  sound 
could  he  hear  besides  the  ticking  of  his  own  alarum, 
set  to  five  o'clock.  He  turned  on  his  side,  saying 
to  himself  that  he  might  disturb  Mr.  Blake  for  nothing 
if  he  moved,  but  directly  he  tr'ed  to  go  to  sleep  his 
mind  misgave  him.  He  got  up  and  moved  very  softly 
into  the  next  room.  As  he  opened  the  door  he  heard  a 
scraping  sound;  the  room  was  in  a  blaze  of.  electric 
light.  Blake  was  half  on  a  chair  by  the  writing-table; 
he  was  in  a  sort  of  crumpled  heap  between  the  chair 
and  the  table,  and  his  eyes  were  shut  and  tears  lay 
below  them  on  the  wasted  cheeks.  Horace  opened 
his  eyes  and  saw  the  young  man  standing  by  him, 
strong,  vigorous  and  kindly;  he  held  his  hand  out  to 
him  for  help. 

"I  'm  sorry  I  woke  you,  Roberts." 

"Nonsense,  sir,"  said  Roberts,  touched  by  his 
gentleness. 

Roberts  helped  him  back  to  bed,  raised  him  in 
strong  hands,  shook  up  his  pillows,  and  rearranged  the 


Horace  BlaKe  117 

bed-clothes.  Horace  watched  him  with  a  sense  of 
relief,  and  felt  his  touch  to  be  firm  and  tender.  Then 
Roberts  put  his  arm  under  the  sharp  shoulder-blades 
and  held  him  a  little  forward  from  his  pillows. 

"That's  nice,"   said   Horace. 

Roberts  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bed. 

"I  've  got  many  a  patient  to  sleep  like  this,"  he 
said. 

"The  pain  is  worse,"  said  Horace  faintly,  "but  I 
don't  want  morphia  to-night.  If  I  get  the  morphia 
into  me  now  it  may  prevent  my  doing  all  I  have  to  do. 
I  must  keep  it  for  worse  times  than  this." 

Roberts  very  gently  massaged  his  back  as  he  held 
him. 

"In  strong  arms,"  was  Horace's  last  thought  as  he 
fell  asleep. 

Roberts  replaced  him  gently  on  the  pillows  without 
his  stirring  in  the  least.  It  was  twenty  minutes  to 
three.  He  saw  all  the  press-cuttings  lying  on  the 
floor,  things  that  he  regarded  with  intense  respect. 

"What  '11  they  be  when  he  dies?"  he  thought,  with 
a  certain  excitement.  "Poor  fellow!  he  won't  get 
much  pleasure  out  of  them  then." 

It  was  five  o'clock  when  Horace  woke.  He  woke 
up  with  the  feeling  with  which  he  had  fallen  asleep  of 
someone  supporting  him,  of  someone  with  him  in  his 
loneliness,  and  he  said:  "Depart  from  me,  for  I  am  a 
sinful  man,  O  Lord."  He  did  not  know  at  once  why 
he  had  said  it,  but  at  the  same  moment  he  felt  an 
atmosphere  of  a  strange  peace.  He  felt  that  the 
sun  was  shining  on  the  sea  outside.  He  lay  resting, 
with  the  contentment  of  one  to  whom  rest  has  become 
a  rare  luxury.  It  seemed  at  first  as  if  some  enormous 
task  had  been  done  for  him,  and  that  he  had  nothing 


n8  Horace   BlaKe 

to  do  but  to  lie  there.  Presently  he  tried  not  to  shrink 
from  the  sense  of  efforts  that  must  be  made,  ordeals 
that  must  be  gone  through. 

At  five  o'clock  Roberts  usually  brought  him  tea,  but 
he  had  overslept  himself.  Horace  did  not  rouse  him; 
the  time  did  not  seem  long  though  he  was  very  thirsty. 
At  last,  anxious  and  remorseful,  Roberts  brought  it. 
He  opened  the  windows  wide;  the  sun  was  shining 
brilliantly  on  the  water  and  on  the  white  sand  of  the 
shores  of  innumerable  islets. 

Horace  lay  back;  he  did  not  know  that  he  was 
smiling. 

"You  have  slept  well,  sir?" 

"Very  well." 

He  drank  his  tea  rather  quickly. 

"I  want  to  dress,"  he  said. 

At  seven  o'clock  the  cure  said  his  Mass.  He,  too, 
had  had  much  pain  in  the  night.  He  walked  feebly  to 
the  church  and  looked,  as  he  felt,  much  depressed. 
When  he  came  out  of  the  sacristy  to  say  Mass  he  saw  the 
wasted  face  and  figure  of  the  strange  Englishman  whom 
he  had  watched  for  in  vain  since  their  one  interview. 

Horace  was  leaning  heavily  on  the  prie-dieu  chair, 
his  eyes  fixed  on  the  Tabernacle.  At  once  the  aspect 
of  life  changed  for  the  cure;  the  sunshine  was  justified 
in  its  brightness,  and  he  went  up  to  the  altar,  his  heart 
singing  within  him. 

From  the  first  words  of  the  Mass  Horace  was  almost 
overwhelmed  by  the  strangest,  sweetest,  saddest 
sense  of  familiarity.  He  knew  it  all  so  well — the 
Confiteor,  the  Kyrie  Eleison,  the  Credo,  and  the  warn- 
ing note  of  the  bell  at  the  Sanctus.  At  length  he  came 
to  the  very  central  action  of  the  Sacrifice;  he  bowed  his 


Horace    BlaKe  119 

soul  in  a  heart-broken  humiliation  at  the  foot  of  the 
Cross  of  the  Lord  Who  had  taken  upon  Him  the 
iniquities  of  us  all. 

Mass  was  over,  and  Horace  did  not  move.  He  was 
reciting  those  mysterious  verses  of  the  Miserere,  which 
he  had  learnt  so  easily  and  lightly  in  his  boyhood: 

"Ecce  enim  veritatem  dilexisti:  incerta  et 
occulta  sapientiae  tuae  manifestati  mihi. 

"Asperges  me  hyssopo  et  mundabor:  lavabis 
me  et  super  nivem  dealbabor. 

"Auditui  meo  dabis  gaudium  et  laetitiam: 
et  exultabunt  ossa  humiliata.  .  .  . 

"Cor  mundum  crea  in  me,  Deus:  et  spiritum 
rectum  innova  in  visceribus  meis. " 

"Thou  shalt  make  me  hear  of  joy  and  gladness." 
It  was  as  if  the  most  terrible  of  sinners  could  make  a 
claim  to  receive  joy  and  gladness  and  uplifting  from 
humiliation. 

"Create  in  me  a  clean  heart."  Blake  in  the 
intense  feeling  of  his  immense  discovery  believed  with 
trembling  joy  that  even  that  was  possible. 

In  many  records  of  human  life  there  are  found  the 
phenomena  of  a  sudden  repentance.  But  wherever 
and  whenever  it  takes  place,  and  whether  it  is  dis- 
torted and  exaggerated,  or  infinitely  peaceful,  there  is 
always  this  element  of  joy.  It  is  not  so  when  men 
repent  of  evil  done  to  each  other.  Human  forgiveness 
is  received,  however  thankfully,  without  that  mysteri- 
ous sense  of  a  great  expansion  of  the  soul  and  an 
infinitely  meek  triumph.  It  is  written  in  the  legend  of 
a  fallen  nun  that  "Only  Heaven  means  crowned,  not 
vanquished,  when  it  says  'Forgiven. ' ' 


XVI 

I   AM   ALSO  HAPPY 

HHHAT  same  evening  the  curb  was  in  his  front 
1  garden  admiring  a  stiff  bed  of  geraniums  edged 
by  large  smooth  white  stones  from  the  beach,  when 
the  gate  in  the  wall  that  separated  his  demesne  from 
the  road  was  opened,  and  he  saw  the  sick  Englishman 
leaning  heavily  on  his  servant's  arm. 

Horace  made  an  effort  to  stand  alone. 

"You  can  go  now,"  he  said  to  Roberts;  and  then 
he  turned  to  M.  le  Cure  and  bowed. 

"  How  am  I  to  get  up  there?  "  he  asked  with  a  smile, 
glancing  at  the  steps  that  mounted  to  the  front  door, 
and  then  down  at  his  own  feeble  limbs. 

"That  is  not  necessary,"  the  cure  answered;  "it 
is  warm.  We  will  sit  on  the  bench  looking  out  to 
sea." 

That  the  cure  could  admire  the  red  geraniums  was 
no  doubt  an  aesthetic  weakness;  but  that  weakness 
did  not  mean  that  he  was  not  in  the  deepest  communi- 
cation with  the  wild  nature  of  his  native  coasts. 

Horace  was  breathless  when  he  sank  down  on  the 
bench.  It  was  in  the  alley  of  hornbeams  opposite  a 
cutting  through  the  branches — a  cutting  that  framed 
the  view  of  three  little  islands  that  thus  separated  from 
the  others  gained  unusual  importance  and  individu- 
ality. 

"I  was  at  Mass  to-day,"  he  said.  "I  was  little 
more  than  a  boy  when  I  last  heard  Mass. " 

120 


Horace    DlaKe  121 

Suddenly  the  red  face  of  the  vicaire  appeared  above 
a  large  armchair  that  he  carried  easily  in  strong  arms. 

Horace  flushed,  and  then,  as  the  big  hands  of  the 
vicaire  settled  the  old  cushions  for  him  to  rest  on,  he 
smiled  his  gratitude  with  a  sweetness  that  instantly 
attached  to  him  the  imagination  of  the  excitable 
Breton.  Or  it  may  be  that  the  man,  with  his  own 
spark  of  genius,  recognised  by  some  mysterious 
intuition  the  greatness  of  the  dying  stranger,  and  had 
a  sudden  knowledge  of  their  kinship. 

It  was  a  real  relief  to  lie  back  on  the  rather  musty 
cushions  after  the  hard  bench. 

"And  so,"  said  Horace,  as  the  vicaire  hastened 
away  down  the  pleached  alley,  "I  am  tired." 

"That  was  to  be  expected,"  said  the  cure. 

"But  I  am  also  happy." 

"That,  too,  was  to  be  expected." 

"  But  I  have  no  right  to  be  happy. " 

"Certainly  not."  The  cure  was  silent  for  a  mo- 
ment. "I  believe  the  tears  of  Magdalen  were  tears 
of  joy.  You  shed  them  at  Mass  this  morning. " 

"  Mass  of  which  I  knew  every  word,  every  gesture, 
every  action,  as  if  I  had  attended  it  unbroken  all  those 
years.  The  familiarity,  the  home  atmosphere,  stung 
me — traitor  as  I  am — until  I  forgot,  all  but — " 
He  paused. 

"Yes,"  said  the  cure,  "I  know." 

"You  cannot  know,"  said  Horace  passionately. 
"  How  can  it  be  right  that  /  should  be  gloriously  happy  ? 
I  have  the  same  unclean  body  and  the  same  unclean 
mind  I  had  yesterday.  I  have  sent  souls  to  the  hell 
in  which  I  believe  to-day.  The  lowest  standards  of 
the  self-indulgent  man  of  the  world  would  condemn 
me — one  woman  died  of  understanding  me.  And  my 


122  Horace   BlaKe 

sins  are  not  things  of  the  past.  Up  to  the  end  I  have 
sinned,  knowing  what  I  did.  I  came  here  with  a  half- 
notion  that  here  I  might  possibly  make  up  my  accounts 
with  another  world.  And  then  the  moment  I  came  in 
touch  with  the  religion  of  my  childhood,  I  felt  partly 
fascinated,  but  much  more  repelled.  I  made  use 
deliberately  of  the  attraction  and  the  revolt  as  an 
experience  for  a  play — and  that  although  I  knew  I  was 
dying.  Then  tell  me,  M.  le  Cure,  how  is  it  just  or 
right  that  to-day  I  have  been  embraced  by  absolute 
holiness.  Suddenly  in  the  midst  of  Mass  I  felt  as  if 
somebody  must  chase  the  unclean  animal  out  of  the 
church,  and  yet  .  .  .  the  whole  world  sang  gloriously 
in  my  soul  and  I  passed  beyond  that  chant  into  what 
I  dare  not  speak  of  if  I  knew  how. " 

"It  is  God's  will,"  said  the  cure.  "David  sinned 
an  intolerable  sin,  a  cruel,  hideous  sin,  and  the  Te 
Deum  has  less  of  joy  in  it  than  the  Miserere.  It  is  a 
mystery  beyond  our  understanding." 

"Or  is  it  a  delusion?"  Horace's  light  eyes  seemed 
to  burn  his  anxiety  into  the  cure's  mind,  as  if  he  would 
sear  him  with  hot  iron. 

" Is  it, "  he  cried,  "the  last  trick  of  my  imagination? 
Is  it  that  as  my  reasoning  powers  are  weakened  the 
influences  of  my  childhood  control  me,  and  I  passively 
receive  the  light  that  was  once  in  me?  Is  there  not 
in  the  death  and  decay  of  Nature  the  most  glorious 
colouring,  and  may  there  not  be  something  analogous 
to  that  in  the  human  brain  that  produces  one  last 
great  illusion  of  beauty  and  glory  for  the  imagination? 
There  might  be  some  last  flare  of  vitality  that  com- 
bines in  its  vision  all  the  most  beautiful  ideas  that 
have  ever  been  impressed  on  the  brain  in  the  past. 
I  can  see  it  all.  I  can  almost  account  for  myself,  for 


Horace    BlaKe  123 

all  this  spiritual  experience,  in  an  analysis  of  that  kind. 
And  then  have  not  bad  men  died  with  splendid  senti- 
ments on  their  lips?  Have  I  not  known  of  absurd 
religious  excitements,  unwholesome,  leading  to  what 
is  almost  immoral  when  men  are  well?  How  can  I 
tell  that  if  I  were  alive  and  strong  it  would  not  be  the 
same  with  me?  I  am  a  wreck,  and  my  dramatic 
imagination  may  be  in  strange  possession.  By 
to-morrow  the  joy  of  this  morning  may  be  gone; 
it  is  waning  now,  and  the  most  hideous  visions  may 
succeed  it.  The  beauty  of  the  corpse  of  my  mind 
may  turn  to  the  last  horror  of  putrefaction. " 

The  cure  was  quite  silent. 

"It  might  be  so,"  he  said  gently,  "only  you  and 
I  know  it  is  not." 

"It  might  be  so,"  said  Horace;  "and,  M.  le  Cure", 
does  it  not  seem  more  probable  that  I  should  be  in 
delusion  than  that  I  should  have  in  fact  my  soul  glori- 
fied, and  my  heart  full  of  love  after  a  whole  existence 
of  blasphemy  and  animalism?  My  cry  to  God  was 
no  better  than  a  dog's  cry !  No !  a  dog's  cry  would  be 
infinitely  less  despicable.  I  had  to  be  driven.  I 
made  my  cry  under  torture;  I  was  on  the  rack;  there 
was  nothing  in  it  that  was  not  ignoble." 

"Let  us  not  confuse  things,"  said  the  cure  very 
gently.  "You  are  afraid  of  believing  in  your  own 
happiness;  be  not  afraid;  that  love  that  fills  you  with 
joy  will  presently  try  you  with  fire.  It  is  possible  to 
reason  anything  away ;  it  is  impossible  to  contrast  our 
own  experience  with  that  of  other  men.  But  let  us 
say  that  you  are  passing  through  a  fit  of  imagination, 
and  let  us  make  use  of  it  so  far  as  it  is  good. 
Let  us  be  kind  and  patient  and  merciful  and  self- 
denying,  and  see  if  our  dreams  cohere  with  our  moral 


124  Horace   BlaKe 

actions.  On  the  other  hand,  what  puzzles  you  has 
puzzled  many  souls.  At  the  influx  of  grace  the  poor 
little  evil  soul  will  feel  magnificent,  infinite ;  we  cannot 
understand  why,  all  the  more  as  it  seems  to  us  as  if 
this  feeling  were  dangerous,  and  has  led  to  dangers  in 
quotable  instances.  But,  if  we  may  conjecture,  perhaps 
it  is  that  the  impact  between  God  and  the  soul  neces- 
sarily fills,  as  it  were,  the  finite  with  the  infinite.  And 
He  allows  weak  souls  to  feel  this  as  they  need  much 
courage  and  buoyancy  for  the  arduous  work  before 
them.  You  feel  great  becau.se  God  is  great,  and 
happy  because  God  is  happy.  Then,  too,  if  we  may 
impute  almost  impulsive  action  to  the  Most  High, 
it  is  impossible  not  to  think  that  the  Father  does  not 
restrain  his  caresses  when  the  soul  comes  to  his 
arms.  There  is  no  conceivable  accumulation  of 
crime  that  He  will  not  forgive." 

There  was  silence.  Horace  shut  his  eyes,  and  the 
cure  watched  his  wan  face  with  an  exquisite  delicacy 
of  compassion.  Presently  he  opened  them  again. 

"Why  must  I,"  he  said  almost  to  himself,  "be  so 
busy  about  judging  and  understanding?  I  almost 
doubt  of  Him  because  He  is  so  good  to  me,  whereas 
others 

"How  do  you  know,"  asked  the  cure,  "that  He  is 
not  equally  good  to  them?  What  will  the  men  you 
have  known  know  of  what  is  passing  in  your  soul, 
and  what  do  you  know  of  what  passes  in  theirs? 
You  must  not  pry  into  His  secrets  about  His  other 
children." 

Again  they  were  silent,  and  presently  the  wind 
turned  cold,  and  it  was  obvious  that  Horace  must  not 
stay. 

The  cure  was  about  to  help  Horace  out  of  his  chair, 


Horace    BlaKe  125 

when  he  paused  for  a  moment,  and  took  off  his  hat 
and  gave  him  his  blessing.     Then,  looking  straight  into 
the  great  eyes  that  seemed  to  him  beautiful  in  their 
wistful  humility,  he  said  firmly  and  with  authority : 
"Pax  tecum." 


XVII 

CHILDREN,   MAKE   HASTE   HOME 

HORACE  was  exhausted  by  all  he  had  gone 
through  that  day,  and  he  slept  well,  but  was  too 
weak  to  get  up  until  late  in  the  following  afternoon. 
When  he  went  out  he  found  that  his  legs  bore  him 
better  than  on  the  previous  day,  and  without  warning 
to  Trix  or  Roberts,  he  walked  off  to  the  cure's  house  and 
climbed  the  flight  of  steps  that  led  to  the  front  door, 
and  was  shown  by  the  servant  into  the  dining-room. 
The  curS  was  fetched,  and  found  Horace  looking  out  on 
to  the  sea  that  was  in  a  dull  mood,  and  almost  plain, 
like  a  beauty  who  insists  on  sulking,  even  when  it  does 
not  suit  her. 

Horace  glanced  up  at  the  ruddy  face,  and  with  an 
appealing  gesture  apologised  for  not  attempting  to 
stand. 

"Eh  bien!  comment  ca  va?"  asked  the  old  man. 

"Peace  down  somewhere  very  deep,  but  troubles  on 
the  surface,  M.  le  Cure", "  said  Horace.  "  I  want  to  go 
to  confession,  and  yet " 

He  paused.  The  cure  had  drawn  up  a  chair,  and 
the  weak,  watery  eyes  looked  out  to  sea,  and  the 
brown,  cracked  lips  of  the  sweet  mouth  puckered  and 
then  became  smooth  again  as  he  waited. 

' '  Can  you  understand  that  part  of  me  is  a  Christian 
boy  who  seems  to  have  gone  to  confession  only  a  short 
time  ago,  but  that  under  all  my  intense  need  for  help 
and  my  real  faith,  I  know  that  there  is  within  me  a 

126 


Horace    BlaKe  127 

brain  that  has  not  been  satisfied,  has  not  seen  it  to  be 
possible  that  Christianity  can  be  justified  to  the  intel- 
lect. For  thirty  years  I  have  accepted  the  adverse 
conclusions  of  men  of  science.  I  wanted  them  to  be 
adverse.  My  father-in-law  always  regretted  those 
conclusions  while  he  forced  them  on  me,  and  for 
some  time  they  did  hurt  acutely,  but  afterwards  I 
wanted  to  be  convinced  by  them.  I  wanted  to  laugh 
at  the  religion  that  clung  to  me  when  I  wished  to  be 
rid  of  it.  I  have  read  German  philosophy,  destructive 
criticism.  I  am  not  a  specialist  in  those  subjects;  but 
I  have  gone  so  far  into  them  it  seems  impossible  that 
these  men  can  be  mistaken.  How  can  I  be  loyal  to 
my  God  if  I  come  to  Him  like  this?  How  can  I,  sick 
unto  death,  make  a  deep  intellectual  inquiry  into  these 
things?  It  is  impossible.  Oh,  my  God,  this  cannot 
be  a  delusion,  this  enormous  peace;  but  how  can  I 
keep  it,  how  can  I  please  Thee,  how  can  I  do  penance  if 
I  am  haunted  by  these  thoughts?" 

The  curb  looked  out  to  sea  where  the  pale  setting 
sun  was  changing  the  shapes  of  the  islands  from  what 
they  had  been  in  the  morning.  He  was  praying. 

"Which  authors  have  had  most  influence  with 
you?"  he  said. 

Horace  mentioned  three. 

"Read  some  of  the  parts  that  are  most  familiar  to 
you  now,  at  once,  not  too  hard  so  as  to  tire  yourself, 
but  see  how  they  look  to  you  now,  how  they  square 
with  your  new  knowledge,  how  they  fit  into  the  great 
facts  of  life.  Approach  them  now  from  the  premisses 
God  has  given  you  and  see  where  what  is  true  in  them 
can  be  grafted  on  to  your  assured  first  principles." 

"  I  see, "  said  Horace.  "You  mean  that  the  value  of 
their  evidence  depends  on  their  first  principles,  the 


128  Horace    BlaKe 

proportion  of  that  evidence  that  matters  to  us  is  what 
squares  with  ours?" 

'"I  know  "Him  in  Whom  I  have  believed, ' "  quoted 
the  cur 6.  "Go  into  it  again  under  the  light  of  His 
Countenance. " 

"But  then,"  said  Horace  humbly,  with  a  hungry 
look  in  his  eyes,  "I  shall  read  them  with  a  bias." 

"Bon  Dieu, "  said  the  old  cure,  taking  a  pinch  of 
snuff,  "and  have  your  authors  written  those  books 
without  a  bias?  It  is  inhuman,  impossible,  not  to 
have  a  bias.  Look,  my  son,  there  is  a  venture  in  this 
business.  See  what  you  can  make  of  the  world  with 
your  hand  in  God's  and  then,  if  you  love  Him,  you 
will  make  the  venture  of  faith.  From  the  first, 
from  to-day,  you  must  make  it — you  must  make 
it  by  doing  the  things  that  will  increase  that  bias 
of  which  you  speak.  You  must  come  and  sit  in 
the  church  when  you  are  too  tired  to  kneel.  You 
must  purify  yourself  in  the  company  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  you  must  be  patient  in  suffering,  kind  to  those 
about  you,  you  must  make  any  sacrifice  you  see  to  be 
necessary.  You  must  make  all  possible  reparation  to 
any  whom  you  have  injured.  You  have  lived  in  sin : 
no  little  remedies  will  avail  you.  You  must  be  purged 
with  a  strong  purge.  But,  strange  anomaly  of  the 
Christian  life,  you  must  remain  in  peace.  Go,  and 
do  all  this  and  read  your  infidel  books,  and  come  back 
to  me  in  a  week,  or  sooner,  as  you  like. " 

"Thank  you,"  said  Horace. 

That  night  he  had  the  courage  to  write  and  tell  Kate 
to  destroy  his  play  at  once.  She  was  mystified  and 
aghast.  She  had  known  him  have  wild  reactions,  and 
disgusts  with  his  work  before  now,  but  he  had  never 
yet  gone  so  far  as  to  wish  to  destroy  it.  This  time  he 


Horace  BlaKe  129 

had  no  one  with  him  to  give  him  confidence  and  courage 
in  the  black  fit  that  followed  on  the  strain  of  pro- 
duction. However,  she  locked  the  MS.  into  her 
despatch-box  with  a  strange  smile  when  she  had 
finished  reading  his  letter.  The  great  point  was  that 
it  was  safe  in  her  hands. 

It  was  a  week  before  the  cure  saw  Horace,  except  in 
the  distance  in  the  church.  Then  he  again  presented 
himself  at  the  presbytery. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  almost  at  once.  "I  don't  pretend 
to  be  able  to  tackle  this  science,  but  I  feel  that  to  me  it 
is  now  beside  the  mark.  I  find  (some  people  might 
say  because  I  want  to  find  it)  enough  of  contradiction, 
of  constant  change,  of  fashions  in  thought,  of  a  man's 
love  of  his  own  methods,  whether  they  square  with 
the  facts  or  not,  to  make  it  impossible  to  pin  one's 
soul  to  their  conclusions.  And  much  that  is  import- 
ant can,  I  think,  as  you  say,  square  with  religious 
premisses.  But,  M.  le  Cure,  that  is  not  all.  The  real 
strength  of  these  men  lies  in  greater  difficulties,  in  the 
miseries  and  anomalies  of  human  nature.  I  look  out 
into  the  world  and  how  do  I  see  the  God  Who  is  giving 
me  light  for  myself?  Is  it  not  a  scene  of  hideous  con- 
tradiction where  the  wicked  triumph  and  the  weak  are 
trampled  under  foot?  It  is  life,  pain,  fraud,  lies  that 
give  those  men  the  force  that  affects  us.  The  phari- 
saism,  the  cant " 

"Stop!"  said  the  cure.  "Mr.  Blake,  you  must  act 
now  and  at  once.  You  must  either  turn  away  or  you 
must  bow  to  the  insoluble.  You  must  not  stand  as  a 
critic  in  the  face  of  creation.  You  must  kneel  at  the 
foot  of  the  Cross  where  hung  your  Creator.  Come  to 
confession  now,  at  once." 


130  Horace   BlaKe 

A  struggle  passed  over  Horace's  face;  then  he  rose 
like  a  child.  They  went  together  to  the  old  church, 
and  Horace  prepared  himself  while  the  cure  said  his 
Office.  Then,  as  if  it  were  no  new  thing,  he  went  into 
the  confessional,  repeated  the  Confiteor  as  he  had  done 
as  a  child  and  told  the  story  of  his  life.  None  of  those 
who  condemned  him  harshly  afterwards  judged  him 
nearly  as  sternly  as  he  judged  himself.  Often  good, 
merciful  people,  in  the  years  to  come,  spoke  of  him 
truly  as  a  very  bad  man;  men  who  were  not  over-strict 
said  truly  that  he  had  reached  the  limit.  But  no  one 
ever  realised  the  truth  of  such  judgments  as  he  did 
himself.  Even  the  queer,  decadent,  immoral  set  he 
had  lived  in  did  not  attempt  in  their  final  verdict  to 
whitewash  him  as  they  whitewash  their  favourites,  but 
no  word  they  ever  spoke  of  him  touched  the  depths  of 
his  own  abasement.  The  horrible  story  was  told  with 
the  simplicity  and  absence  of  comment  that  had  been 
enjoined  on  the  innocent  boy  at  his  first  confession. 
No  humiliation  the  world  could  have  inflicted  on 
him  was  as  deep  as  the  humiliation  he  inflicted  on 
himself. 

They  came  out,  the  old  man  and  the  middle-aged 
one,  on  both  of  whom  Death  had  already  set  his 
marks.  The  old  cure  knelt  before  the  Lady  altar  and 
cried.  He  almost  thought  he  could  hear  the  rejoicing 
of  the  angels  as  he  had  never  heard  them  before. 

Presently  the  cure  touched  the  sick  man  on  the 
shoulder. 

"My  son,  you  must  rest.  Go  and  rest  and  thank 
God." 

In  his  inner  consciousness  at  that  moment  Horace 
was  kneeling  by  his  sister  Mary,  and  their  mother 
knelt  in  front  of  them.  Their  mother  turned  round 


Horace    DlaKe  131 

and  said:  "Children,  make  haste  home,"  and  he 
realised  that  the  cure  was  speaking  to  him. 

Horace  looked  up  and  then  took  the  old,  red  hand  in 
his  and  kissed  it.  The  expression  of  his  face  was 
infinitely  humble,  modest  and  tender.  Death  might 
have  chosen  that  moment  in  mercy,  but  the  life  had 
to  be  finished  that  Horace  had  made  for  himself.  The 
lesson  was  a  far  harder  one  than  he  could  yet  suppose 
to  be  possible,  and  he  had  to  learn  it  bit  by  bit  in  long, 
slow  moments,  long,  dragging  hours. 

After  that  the  cure  had  to  give  him  a  still  muscular 
arm  until  they  neared  the  hotel  and  he  was  relived 
by  the  amazed  and  almost  suspicious  Roberts. 


XVIII 

YOU  CAN   HELP  ME 

MRS.  BLAKE  and  Stephen  Tempest  were  again 
alone  in  the  smoking-room  of  the  club  in  which 
she  was  staying.  It  was  a  dull  room  where  in  the 
afternoons  women  with  white  and  grey  and  yellow  and 
black  hair  played  at  bridge  with  a  faint  air  of  emanci- 
pation. Perhaps  they  felt  themselves  to  be  the  heirs 
to  all  the  ages  in  which  women  had  been  tormented 
and  enslaved. 

Kate  Blake  had  no  interest  in  their  doings;  she 
was  too  full  of  what  she  had  in  hand.  She  was 
glad  that  this  room  was  so  often  empty  in  the 
mornings. 

"Mr.  Tempest,"  she  said  suddenly,  "do  you  dislike 
being  talked  to  as  I  talk  to  you?  I  mean,  is  the  bur- 
den of  confidence  rather  trying?" 

"Not  in  the  least,  I  assure  you."  He  had  not  so 
far  felt  as  if  she  had  been  at  all  confidential;  he  had 
only  glimpsed  under  her  reserve.  But  she  was  so 
uncommunicative  with  man  or  woman  that  she  was 
astonished  at  the  freedom  with  which  she  spoke  to 
Stephen. 

"It  must  seem  strange  that  I  am  here  as  you  know 
how  ill  Horace  is. " 

"I  am  certain — "  began  Stephen. 

Kate  interrupted  him. 

"I  have  suffered  before  when  he  left  me  for  other 
things — business  or  pleasure — but  I  never  felt  it  as  I 

132 


Horace    BlaKe  133 

feel  it  now  when  he  has  left  me  to  go  away  to  suffer 
alone — perhaps  to  die." 

She  was  leaning  forward  in  a  deep  low  leather 
armchair  with  her  elbows  on  her  knees.  Looking 
straight  in  front  of  her  she  went  on : 

"I  understand  it;  his  illness  has  touched  something 
in  his  brain.  He  has  never  had  any  control  of  his 
nerves,  and  now  he  wants  to  be  away  from  me  because 
he  cannot  bear  to  see  in  my  face  my  belief  that  he  is 
dying.  If  I  were  there  he  must  face  the  things  that 
have  to  be  done,  or  he  thinks  so.  Then  he  is  worn  out, 
shockingly  tired,  an  infinitely  acute  sort  of  fatigue; 
he  has  played  himself  out,  he  has  exploited  himself 
for  his  work.  And  I  have  always  helped  him  to  work, 
in  one  sense  I  have  not  spared  him.  I  knew  it  was 
best  for  him,  Mr.  Tempest,  to  develop  the  higher  side 
of  him.  So  you  see  I  am,  to  his  mind,  a  person  to  work 
with,  not  to  rest  with.  I  have  had  too  much  influence 
with  him.  I  think  he  will  need  me  before  the  end. 
Day  and  night  I  wait  to  be  summoned  and  I  don't 
think  he  can  put  me  off  much  longer  now.  We  are 
too  close  to  each  other  in  a  way.  Then,  too,  he  will 
get  to  the  time  when  he  will  want  to  think  of  the  future, 
and  what  is  to  become  of  his  work. "  She  paused,  and 
then  added:  " If  he  had  had  a  less  good  nurse  he  must 
have  needed  me  now." 

Stephen  looked  at  her  in  speechless  sympathy. 

"What  does  the  doctor  out  there  think  of  him?" 

"He  has  no  doctor  out  there.  Sir  Thomas  Good- 
stone  said  that  I  need  not  insist  on  one.  If  Roberts, 
the  trained  nurse,  is  not  satisfied  as  to  what  he  ought 
to  do  he  will  wire  to  Sir  Thomas,  who  will  go  out  there 
at  once." 

"The  strangest  thing  to  me,"  Kate  went  on,  "is 


134  Horace    BlaKe 

that  he  has  had  the  strength  to  work,  and  work  hard. 
I  think  he  must  have  needed  me  then.  He  has  " — she 
looked  as  if  she  were  imparting  a  secret  of  world-wide 
importance — "he  has  finished  his  play." 

"Has  he  really?"  cried  Stephen  eagerly. 

Mrs.  Blake  hesitated  for  a  moment. 

"I  don't  think  I  ought  to  talk  of  it  now." 

"What  amazing  pluck!"  said  Stephen. 

"Yes,"  said  Kate  proudly,  "he  was  aching  for 
rest,  then  he  had  a  bad  attack  of  pain;  when  that 
passed  off  he  wrote  in  a  sudden  flare  of  energy  for 
three  days  and  most  of  the  three  nights.  I  am  not 
sure  if  it  is  the  greatest  thing  he  has  done,  but  I  think 
so.  Mr.  Tempest,  did  I  hear  you  say  last  night  that 
you  were  going  abroad?" 

"Yes,  for  two  or  three  weeks.  I  have  not  yet  de- 
cided where  to  go,  but  the  man  I  devil  for  is  ill  and  I 
have  an  article  to  write  and  I  want  quiet. " 

"I  wonder  if  you  would  go  to  Brittany?  It  is  very 
beautiful.  I  want  you  to  know  my  husband.  I 
want  a  friend  to  tell  me  how  he  seems.  I  want  a 
report  I  can  trust.  I  have  known  you  such  a  short 
time  that  you  must  think  this  very  strange  of  me,  but 
I  believe  that  you  are  just  the  one  person  who  can 
help  me. " 

"Of  course  I  will,"  said  Stephen  eagerly.  "It 
will  be  a  privilege  I  shall  be  proud  of."  He  spoke 
quickly  because  his  heart  sank  at  the  idea.  Would 
Blake  not  think  it  an  abominable  intrusion  for  this 
strange  young  man  to  invade  his  privacy? 

Kate  detected  his  feeling. 

"I  don't  mean  that  it  should  be  more  than  that 
you  should  choose  that  wonderful  coast  for  your 
change.  You  will  find  out  at  once  whether  he  likes 


Horace   BlaKe  135 

to  have  visits  from  you  and  if  he  does  not  you  will  have 
just  the  same  time  abroad  for  your  work  as  you 
expected  to  have.  Will  you  trust  me  that  I  am  right? 
I  have  reasons  I  can't  explain." 

"I  will  do  just  as  you  tell  me,"  said  Stephen,  with 
convincing  energy.  "And, "  he  went  on  with  a  smile, 
"am  I  to  take  a  letter  of  introduction?" 

"I  will  write  to  Trix  and  tell  her  to  find  out  if  her 
father  would  like  to  see  you.  Then  they  will  be  pre- 
pared when  you  call." 

Then  they  talked  again  of  the  play  and  presently 
Stephen  went  away  to  his  own  club  to  consult  Baede- 
ker as  to  a  good  hotel  in  the  neighbourhood  of  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies. 

Kate  was  right  in  her  choice.  If  she  had  sent  an 
old  friend  Horace  must  have  seen  him,  even  if  it  were 
against  his  will.  This  young  man  would  not  appear 
in  the  light  of  an  obligation,  probably  he  would  be  a 
distraction.  But  the  main  object  in  her  mind  was 
that  a  possible  future  biographer  should  know  Hor- 
ace in  the  flesh — what  flesh  and  blood  and  bones  were 
left  of  him.  Otherwise  how  would  he  ever  present 
him  to  the  world? 

Stephen,  of  course,  had  not  the  faintest  suspicion  of 
what  was  passing  in  her  mind,  or  he  would  have  felt 
it  almost  impossible  to  do  her  bidding. 


XIX 

THE   WEAKNESS   OF   FAME 

afternoon  post  had  brought  quite  a  mass  of 
1  letters  and  papers.  Horace,  who  was  lying 
in  the  garden,  took  them  up  eagerly,  and  for  some 
minutes  he  quite  enjoyed  them.  Trix  came  out 
and  he  made  her  read  aloud  a  short  article  on  his  own 
work  which  Kate  had  forwarded. 

When  she  finished  he  seemed  to  have  become 
absent-minded. 

"Strange,  strange,"  he  thought,  "how  far  away  it 
sounds.  No  one  about  me  here  realises  me  in  that 
way.  Would  M.  le  Cur£  be  at  all  interested  in  my 
position  in  the  world  over  there?  His  Theodore  Bo- 
trel  is  probably  a  far  greater  man  in  his  eyes.  That  is 
the  real  weakness  of  fame — that  we  cannot  realise  it 
ourselves  unless  those  near  us  reflect  it.  A  small,  kind 
thing  near  us  makes  far  more  happiness  than  the 
great  thing  that  is  not  brought  home  to  us.  Trix, 
what  big  eyes  you  have!" 

"The  better  to  see  that  you  are  tired,  father!" 

"Tired  out,"  said  Horace,  "infinitely  tired." 

"Can  I  do  anything,  father?" 

"You  can  do  a  great  deal." 

"What?  do  tell  me." 

"Just  sit  there  and  be  my  rest.  'Du  bist  die 
Ruhe.'  I  have  never  seen  anyone  so  restful  except 
Mary." 

"Aunt  Mary?" 

136 


Horace    BlaKe  137 

"Yes,  Aunt  Mary,  you  very  young  thing.  She 
had  your  features,  your  hair,  but" — he  gave  a  sharp 
sigh — "she  had  other  things  you  have  not  got." 

"You  mean  that  she  was  beautiful?" 

"No,  Trix;  I  don't  mean  that." 

He  was  silent,  watching  her  with  a  look  of  pain  in 
his  eyes. 

"I  am  not  your  'Ruhe'  now,  father,  am  I?" 

Blake  sighed  again. 

"Go  along,  get  away!"  he  cried  with  one  of  his 
sweetest  smiles.  "You  must  walk,  run.  Is  there  no 
girl  here  you  could  play  tennis  with  ? ' ' 

"I  like  the  sea-coast  best." 

"Don't  tumble  over  the  cliffs,  for  my  sake." 

Trix  went  in  to  the  hotel  to  fetch  her  hat,  but 
was  back  again  in  a  moment.  She  spoke  in  a  low 
voice. 

"I  have  just  heard  a  visitor  asking  for  you;  it  must 
be  that  Mr.  Tempest  mother  wrote  about." 

Trix  was  inclined  to  resent  this  young  man  being 
sent  to  see  them.  It  seemed  to  her  that  her  mother 
was  to  blame  for  letting  him  disturb  them  like  this. 
Her  father  might  not  like  to  refuse  to  see  him  as  he  had 
refused  to  see  the  newspaper-man.  The  short  note 
to  Trix  had  said  so  little;  it  had  been  all  about  this 
stranger,  and  she  had  been  hurt  at  no  more  sympathy 
being  shown  to  herself.  It  was  natural  that  the  letters 
had  hitherto  been  written  to  her  father,  but  when  one 
came  to  herself  she  thought  there  would  have  been 
some  sympathy  with  the  anxieties  of  her  position  as 
the  only  woman  with  him. 

Roberts  brought  out  Stephen's  card  to  Miss  Blake. 
He  had  written  on  it  the  name  of  an  hotel  at  the 
neighbouring  town. 


138  Horace    BlaKe 

"There  's  no  need  to  see  him  to-day,  father,"  was 
her  immediate  comment.  "  Mother  warned  him  that 
you  might  not  be  well  enough." 

"Oh,  yes, "  said  Horace.  " I  know  that,  but  I  think 
he  might  be  amusing.  Bring  him  here,  Roberts,  and 
say  we  '11  have  tea  out  here,  will  you?" 

A  man  stretched  out  on  a  chaise  longue,  covered  with 
a  rug,  and  standing  behind  him  a  tall  young  girl, 
became  visible  to  Stephen  as  he  followed  Roberts 
round  a  belt  of  evergreens.  He  had  to  shake  hands 
before  he  could  see  them  in  focus  at  all. 

He  had  at  once  an  impression  of  the  man's  great, 
light  eyes  and  charming  smile,  and  of  a  rather  serious, 
almost  cross  look  on  the  girl's  pretty  face. 

"You  have  been  meeting  Mrs.  Blake  in  London," 
said  Horace.  "  What  has  brought  you  out  here? " 

"  I  had  some  work  to  do  and  I  wanted  sea  air  and  a 
quiet  place." 

"It 's  a  capital  place  for  work  or  for  rest,"  said 
Horace  cheerfully.  "  I  hope  your  hotel  pleases  you  as 
much  as  this  one  pleases  us.  Here  comes  tea. " 

As  he  turned  his  head  away  for  a  moment  Stephen 
had  the  impression  that  he  was  in  pain.  Trix  looked 
at  her  father  with  a  glance  of  the  deepest  sympathy, 
and  what  had  been  pretty  in  her  young  face  before, 
became  beautiful. 

They  were  in  a  moment  chatting  about  the  hotel 
servants,  and  Petit-bon  and  his  exactions. 

"  I  believe  father  pays  twice  as  much  for  his  boat  as 
anybody  else  pays." 

"We  pay  for  his  conversation,  Trix;  you  must  pay 
for  your  amusements.  Besides,  does  he  not  sing  as 
the  songs  of  Botrel  which  you  delight  in?" 

"  Mr.  Tempest  has  not  so  much  as  heard  of  Botrel — 


Horace    BlaKe  139 

as  people  here  have  not  heard  of  Horace  Blake," 
Trix  said  laughingly  to  her  father. 

"By  the  way,  did  my  wife  tell  you  if  there  are  still 
full  houses  for  False  Measures?" 

"Crowded,  I  know,"  said  Stephen  Tempest;  "and 
very  good  audiences,  not  only  laughing  where  you 
have  plainly  ordered  them  to  do  so,  but  entering  into 
the  lights  and  shades  of  your  meaning.  At  least, "  he 
added,  diffidently,  "what  I  believe  to  be  your  meaning. 
I  have  been  ten  times  myself. " 

"And  I  have  never  seen  one  of  father's  plays,  or 
even  read  them,"  cried  Trix,  from  whose  face  the 
symptoms  of  annoyance  had  vanished  very  easily. 

"And  you  are  almost  eighteen,"  said  Horace 
quickly.  "No,  I  don't  want  you  to  read  them  before 
you  see  them,  and  I  don't  want  you  to  see  them  until 
— "  He  hesitated. 

"Until  I  am  fifty,"  said  Trix,  and  the  two  men 
laughed. 

There  was  very  little  said  that  was  not  of  the  most 
ordinary  kind  of  chit-chat.  Stephen  got  the  impres- 
sion that  Horace  treated  his  daughter  with  an  almost 
old-fashioned  care,  and  as  the  acquaintance  ripened, 
he  became  sure  that  he  was  right.  The  father  was 
ultra  careful  as  to  what  was  spoken  of  before  her. 
Their  mutual  devotion  touched  him  from  the  first. 

That  first  evening  he  stayed  about  an  hour,  but  he 
was  asked  to  come  again  soon  by  both  father  and 
daughter. 

Except  for  the  passing  impression  of  suffering, 
Stephen  had  seen  nothing  that  was  not  peaceful  or 
happy.  He  was  drawn  to  Blake  in  a  way  that  aston- 
ished him.  There  was  something  of  wonderful  pa- 
tience in  the  great  luminous  eyes,  of  subtle  meaning 


140  Horace  BlaKe 

tempered  with  sweetness  in  the  large,  irregular  mouth. 
The  next  time  he  came,  Blake  was  again  in  the  garden. 
After  a  few  minutes'  talk  he  said: 

"  I  wish  you  would  take  her  out  for  a  row  or  a  walk. 
She  ties  herself  to  the  leg  of  this  chair,  and  it 's  not 
good  for  her." 

Stephen  saw  that  something  had  passed  between 
them  on  the  subject  before  he  came,  and  that  Trix  had 
had  her  orders.  As  he  followed  her  out  by  the  gate 
that  led  down  to  the  sea,  a  tall  old  priest  came  towards 
them.  Trix  gave  him  a  friendly  nod,  which  the  old 
man  returned  by  a  dignified  waving  of  his  hat. 

"It  is  the  land  of  bows,"  said  Stephen,  "but  I  Ve 
seen  few  as  good  as  that  of  that  ruddy  old  personage.  " 

"He  is  a  dear  old  man,"  said  Trix.  "I  'm  afraid 
with  all  that  ruddy  look  he  is  very  ill.  He  suffers  a 
great  deal,  the  sacristan  tells  me.  Oh,  she  is  such  a 
funny  little  old  woman,  the  sacristan — half  a  one, 
she  says,  because  her  sister  is  dead.  She  will  declare 
that  I  'm  a  Protestant  and  I  tell  her  I  'm  nothing,  and 
she  says  that  's  nonsense.  We  have  such  fights.  You 
should  see  the  airs  she  gives  herself  when  she  takes 
the  sous  for  the  chairs.  The  other  night  she  tapped 
father  on  the  shoulder  as  if  he  were  a  naughty  school- 
boy. But  she  tells  me  that  father  is  a  saint." 

Stephen  repressed  a  laugh  of  undue  vigour  into  a 
merry  one. 

"Well,  I  'm  not  sure  she  is  not  right,  after  all," 
said  Trix  aggressively.  "I  don't  know  much  about 
saints,  but  if  to  be  amazingly  patient  and  unselfish  and 
always  thinking  of  other  people  before  yourself  is  to  be 
like  a  saint,  then  father  is  like  a  saint. " 

"  It  seems  to  me  an  uncommonly  good  description  of 
one,"  said  Stephen. 


Horace    BlaKe  141 

Trix  was  so  full  of  her  subject  that  it  had  over- 
flowed almost  unconsciously.  She  pulled  herself  up  a 
little. 

"Did  you  ever  see  a  coast  with  such  wonderful 
colouring?"  she  asked. 

"It  is  glorious, "  said  Tempest,  turning  towards  her 
as  she  looked  out  to  sea.  She,  too,  had  light  in  her 
eyes,  but  they  were  darker  than  her  father's;  she  had, 
too,  his  mobile  lips  and  delicate  chin.  If  there  was  an 
element  of  weakness  in  Blake's  face  he  could  not  tell  if 
there  were  the  same  element  in  Trix ;  in  her  it  might 
be  only  gentleness.  "Not  the  faintest  look  of  her 
mother, "  he  concluded. 

They  climbed  over  rocks  and  visited  a  cave  where 
a  famous  royalist  had  spent  three  months  in  hiding. 
Trix  became  still  younger  in  his  eyes  as  she  grew  ex- 
cited, with  the  wind  in  her  face  and  the  water  at  her 
feet.  She  showed  him  her  favourite  little  bay  where 
the  sand  seldom  had  a  footmark  to  mar  its  exquisite 
smoothness,  and  rocks  lay  like  dark  animals  at  rest 
until  the  cruel  sea  came  to  play  with  them  before 
they  were  swallowed  up.  They  stood  on  the  rocks 
until  they  had  to  make  wide  jumps  to  get  back  to  the 
dry  sand. 

She  took  him  back  to  the  chaise  longue  to  say  good- 
bye. Horace  looked  ghastly  as  they  found  him  with 
his  eyes  shut.  Tempest,  glancing  at  Trix,  saw  that 
she  was  not  startled  or  frightened  by  a  look  in  the  face 
that  appalled  him. 

"Run  in  and  change  for  dinner,  child, "  said  Blake,  a 
great  light  coming  into  his  face  as  his  eyes  opened  upon 
her.  And  then,  when  she  had  gone,  he  turned  to  the 
visitor. 

"I  wanted  to  thank  you.     She  has  so  little  fun. 


142  Horace    BlaKe 

You  have  done  just  what  I  wished  to-day.  Can  you 
come  again  soon?" 

"  Curious  enough  are  my  relations  with  the  family  of 
Blake,"  Tempest  murmured  to  himself  as  he  walked 
quickly  down  the  high  road.  "  I  met  Mrs.  Blake  only 
the  other  day,  and  I  have  come  to  Brittany  by  her 
orders  to  see  after  her  husband.  I  saw  Blake  for  the 
first  time  two  days  ago,  and  I  go  out  by  his  orders 
to  amuse  his  daughter,  who  confides  in  me  that  Horace 
Blake  is  a  saint!"  He  laughed  a  little,  but  it  was 
extremely  touching  all  the  same. 

"What  an  astonishing  person  he  is,"  thought 
Tempest.  "Isn't  there  something  of  the  savage 
latent  in  him  after  all — a  savage  who  is  under  some 
strange  influence?" 


XX 

THE   SEVEN   DEVILS 

QTEPHEN  was  more  than  willing  to  do  Blake's 
O  behest  and  to  undertake  to  amuse  his  daughter. 
He  became  interested  in  what  he  understood  to  have 
been  her  strange  education.  She  had  never  been  to 
school,  never  had  a  governess,  hardly  ever  talked  with 
other  girls.  Why  had  she  been  so  isolated?  He 
gathered  that  her  aunt's  home  had  been  near  a  large 
village  where  religion  made  a  great  part  of  the  interest 
of  daily  life.  Probably  her  absence  of  creed  had 
isolated  her.  But  why  had  she  not  lived  with  her 
parents?  Trix's  present  feelings  towards  her  father 
evidently  coloured  the  retrospect,  but  Stephen  could 
not  make  out  that  she  had  been  with  him  more  than 
occasionally.  The  child  had  no  notion  how  clearly 
she  betrayed  that  she  was  now  bitterly  hurt  by  her 
mother,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  feeling  must 
have  been  of  long,  if  unconscious  growth.  Poor  Mrs. 
Blake !  Had  she  sacrificed  the  child  for  the  sake  of  the 
husband,  only  to  find  at  the  very  end  that  he  would 
rather  be  without  her — that  he  would  rather  have  the 
child  with  him  than  herself? 

Kate  seemed  a  tragic  figure  in  the  background  of 
this  loving  duet  between  the  father  and  daughter. 
There  was  something  unusual  in  Horace's  attitude 
towards  his  daughter,  there  was  no  sense  of  authority 
in  it,  but  a  tender,  surprised  gratitude,  and  at  moments 
almost  a  painful  look  of  appeal  and  humil'ty. 

143 


144  Horace    DlaKe 

Stephen  knew  little  of  Blake's  reputation  as  a  man — 
in  fact  until  lately  even  the  outward  semblance  of 
Horace's  personality  was  not  generally  known.  Kate 
had  realised  that  to  Stephen,  Blake  was  simply  the 
author  of  False  Measures  and  its  predecessors.  But 
there  was  enough  in  those  plays — interpret  them  as 
you  liked — to  make  this  invalid  with  his  restrained  talk 
and  his  ethereal  smile  sufficiently  surprising.  Even  on 
the  most  idealised  view  the  Blake  plays  could  hardly 
have  been  written  by  a  sacristan's  saint.  Kate  could 
have  told  him  that  Blake  had  always  had  an  exquisite 
smile  at  his  command,  but  there  was  something 
in  it  now  at  once  aloof  and  piteous  in  its  patience. 
Stephen  had,  so  far,  found  in  him  neither  the  daring 
wit  nor  the  strong  blows  of  the  Iconoclast.  He  could 
not  analyse  the  charm  of  the  personality  or  the  sense 
of  peace  and  pleasant  things  that  were  in  the  atmos- 
phere while  he  and  Trix  and  Stephen  chatted  en 
about  the  coast  and  the  people  and  the  books  they 
loved,  as  if  life  were  made  up  of  what  was  exquisite, 
familiar,  and  intimate. 

One  day  when  the  two  men  sat  outside  after  dejeu- 
ner and  Trix  had  gone  off  with  the  manageress  of  the 
hotel  to  see  the  Fair,  Stephen  got  a  far  less  happy 
impression.  They  talked  of  the  stage,  and  presently 
Horace  fell  into  anecdotes  that  fairly  made  Tempest 
stare.  Then,  quite  suddenly,  he  stopped  short  and 
was  perfectly  silent.  Stephen,  turning  round,  saw  a 
look  of  anguish  on  his  face,  and  thought  he  was  in 
pain. 

"I  intended,"  he  said  suddenly,  "never  to  talk 
like  that  again.  I  thought  I  never  should,  but  at  the 
slightest  opening  I  fell  into  it."  He  paused  again, 
and  then  changed  the  subject. 


Horace    BlaKe  145 

"  Did  my  wife  tell  you  that  I  had  sent  her  the  last 
act  of  my  play?" 

"Yes,  she  did;  in  confidence." 

"I  wonder  where  she  burnt  it,"  said  Horace.  "It 
was  a  large  bit  to  burn  on  a  hot  day. " 

"Burnt  it?"  cried  Stephen. 

"Yes,  I  told  her  to  burn  it.  It  had  to  be  done, 
Tempest,  but  I  'm  afraid  it  will  have  tried  her.  If  she 
said  nothing  about  that  she  can't  have  had  my  letter 
with  its  annoying  announcement  when  you  saw  her." 

Tempest  was  too  much  amazed  to  be  able  to  talk 
easily  on  any  other  subject.  At  last  he  went  back  to 
it.  "  I  hope  you  won't  think  me  impertinent,  but  I  am 
aghast.  Mrs.  Blake  was  inclined  to  think  that  it  is 
the  best  thing  you  have  done." 

"Did  she  say  that?"  asked  Horace  eagerly.  "I 
was  afraid  that  all  the  praise  in  her  letters  was  just  to 
please  me." 

"I  don't  believe,"  said  Stephen  slowly,  "that  it  is 
burnt.  Why,  good  heavens!  it 's  impossible.  Have 
you  no  copy?" 

"No,"  said  Horace.  "Let  us  leave  it  alone,  I 
can't  go  back  on  it." 

"I  don't  believe  she  has  destroyed  it  or  that  she 
will  destroy  it,"  said  Stephen  doggedly. 

A  curious  look,  almost  a  sly  look,  came  into  Horace's 
face. 

"I  have  told  her  to,"  he  said,  and  Stephen  thought 
at  once  that  Blake  hoped  it  might  not  be  destroyed. 
After  that  he  became  restless. 

"A  beastly  wind.  I  'm  getting  sick  of  this  climate. 
I  believe  I  've  caught  cold.  Where  's  Trix?  Oh, 
never  mind.  Yes,  thank  you,  I  am  told  I  am  better; 
but  the  worst  of  having  a  disease  that  none  of  these 


146  Horace  BlaKe 

men  understands  is  that  no  one  really  knows  when 
I  am  better  or  worse.  I  believe  I  am  considered  very 
interesting  in  the  London  hospitals.  I  wish  I  could 
take  a  scientific  interest  in  my  damned  body  myself. 
I  saw  the  men's  eyes  glistening  with  enjoyment  at 
their  last  consultation.  They  hung  me  up  stark- 
naked  while  they  photographed  my  inside  for  a  mortal 
hour,  and  one  of  them  said  that  the  results  were 
beautiful.  If  I  'd  been  an  Eastern  potentate  I  'd 
have  had  that  scoundrel  flayed  alive.  Would  n't  I 
have  enjoyed  it."  He  looked  cruel  in  his  laughter. 
"There  's  a  picture  in  Bruges  of  an  unjust  judge  being 
flayed  alive,  the  skin  drawn  off.  Bah!  it 's  a  mar- 
vellous bit  of  realism,  and  the  just  judge  looking  on 
and  enjoying  it.  That 's  how  the  good  enjoyed 
themselves  in  the  Middle  Ages." 

"Do  you  suppose  they  felt  things  as  acutely  as  we 
do  now?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Horace.  "Who  ever  knows? 
How  do  you  know  what  I  'm  feeling  now?  It 's  just 
coming  on  again ;  talk  of  something  else. "  He  realised 
himself  on  his  elbow.  "Ah,  forgive  me,  Tempest," 
he  said  suddenly ;  "bear  with  a  tortured  beast, "  and  he 
added  under  his  breath,  "who  thoroughly  deserves  it. 
Would  you  be  kind  and  fetch  Roberts,  and  there  's 
the  child  coming  back,  if  you  have  time  to  spare  would 
you  take  her  out  somewhere?  Don't  tell  her,"  he 
groaned,  "that  I  'm  a  bit  bad." 

Tempest  obediently  started  off,  first  to  summon 
Roberts  and  then  to  intercept  Trix. 

Horace  soon  felt  that  the  worst  pain  had  subsided, 
but  a  dull  ache  was  left.  Roberts  knew  that  he  was  in 
a  black  mood. 

"He  's  keeping  the  curses  in  by  main  force,"  he 


Horace    BlaKe  147 

said  to  himself.  The  effect  of  irritability  was  so  in- 
tense that  it  told  on  the  man-nurse  as  a  sirocco  tells 
on  the  nerves  in  Florence.  He  exercised  self-restraint 
so  obviously  as  to  exasperate  Horace.  Five  different 
positions  were  tried,  cushions  heaped  up,  then  no 
cushions  at  all;  a  cigar  lit  and  thrown  away,  then  the 
chaise  longue  was  to  be  moved  out  of  the  wind,  and 
each  spot  chosen  proved  to  have  a  draught  of  its  own. 
Two  girls  came  out  of  the  hotel  and  sat  near,  and 
Horace  stared  at  them  until  they  moved  on,  trying 
not  to  look  annoyed.  Then  an  old  woman  came  out 
with  her  bath-towels  and  said  cheerfully  that  she  was 
going  for  a  dip.  Horace  felt  a  repulsion  for  old  and 
ugly  women  that  amounted  to  hatred.  And  it  was 
not  tactful  to  blare  her  strength,  the  fact  that  she  could 
bathe  in  that  wind,  to  the  poor  wreck  before  her. 

Presently  the  curb  came  through  the  little  iron 
gate  among  the  shrubs. 

"Curse  it!  leave  it  where  it  is,"  muttered  Horace, 
and  Roberts  let  go  the  chaise  longue  with  the  attenu- 
ated form  in  it  and  fetched  a  chair  for  the  visitor. 

"Comment  c,a  va  ce  matin?"  said  the  old  man  as 
he  sat  down,  rilling  the  garden  chair.  The  fine  shoul- 
ders and  ruddy  face  looked  healthy  to  the  untrained 
eye,  but  Roberts  detected  other  symptoms. 

"It  goes  very  badly,"  said  Horace  gently.  "Soul 
and  body — I  am  disposed  to  think  that  the  seven 
devils  have  arrived."  He  gave  a  sad,  sweet  smile. 

"They  were  to  be  expected,"  said  the  old  man 
gently. 

"I  will  tell  you,"  said  Horace,  "what  they  are 
talking  about.  One  says,  'A  hopelessly  rotten  lot — 
threw  over  his  last  grace  years  ago ;  we  need  n't 
trouble,  we  're  sure  of  him.'  Number  Two  says: 


148  Horace    BlaKe     . 

'Well,  anyhow,  the  evil  he  has  done  will  live  after 
him.'  Number  Three  says :  '  He  does  n't  really  believe 
it  all.'  Number  Four  says:  'So  he  will  get  no  good 
by  worrying  himself  and  us.'  Number  Five  says: 
'  The  only  thing  he  sold  his  soul  for  was  fame,  and  he 
is  throwing  that  away  at  the  end.'  Number  Six 
says:  'And  he  is  depriving  his  wife,  after  he  has 
treated  her  abominably,  of  just  what  she  cares  for 
most.'  Number  Seven  says : '  She  's  not  such  a  fool  as 
to  burn  the  play ;  he  has  only  to  let  it  alone ;  that  's  the 
best  way  to  put  it  to  him.'  Then  all  seven  have  a 
sort  of  quadrille,  the  old  previous  devil  joining  in  to 
make  eight,  and  think  what  fun  they  will  get  out  of 
that  play  after  all." 

"And  you,"  said  the  curi,  taking  a  pinch  of  snuff, 
"repeat  the  'Hail,  Mary!'  and  whisht!" — he  gave  his 
handkerchief  a  switch — "off  they  go."  He  pointed 
downwards.  "Ite  inferius, "  he  concluded,  as  if  he 
saw  the  black  things  under  Horace's  chair. 

Horace  smiled  affectionately.  "But  I  've  made 
them  say  the  truth  as  it  came  more  politely  out  of 
their  black  lips." 

"No,  not  the  truth,"  said  the  old  man  very  softly, 
"not  the  truth.  But  now  about  this  play;  is  it  really 
impossible?" 

"Quite,"  said  Horace. 

"Could  I  understand  it  if  I  read  it?" 

Horace  tried  to  hide  his  amusement. 

"  I  fear  not ;  I  almost  hope  not, "  he  said. 

"May  I  try?" 

"Heaven  forbid!"  said  Horace. 

"What  does  your  wife  think  of  it? " 

"She  thinks  it  the  best  thing  I  have  done  yet. " 
•  "Then  it  can't  be  so  very  bad." 


Horace    BlaKe  149 

Horace  was  silent.  It  came  home  to  him  with  great 
force  that  he  could  not  conceive  Kate  sticking  at 
anything  he  could  write. 

"Look,  mon  pere, "  he  said,  with  a  certain  eager 
loyalty  to  Kate,  "Madame  was  brought  up  without 
religion;  she  is  pure  to  the  core,  but  I — I  have  given 
her  a  long  training  in  these  matters.  I  have  taken  off 
the  keen  edge  of  her  susceptibilities.  I  have  taught 
her  to  put  art  before  everything.  I  have  bruised  out 
of  her  the  pride  that  other  women  have  in  their  home- 
life;  she  has  forgiven  me  and  despised  me,  and  found 
comfort  and  pride  in  my  success.  I  think  by  now 
she  might  sacrifice  anything  to  my  success.  When  I 
think,  M.  le  Cure",  of  the  noble,  simple  life  she  led  with 
her  father,  and  what  I  have  dragged  her  through,  I 
don't  know  whether  I  love  her  or  hate  her. " 

He  covered  his  face  with  his  hands. 

"  The  only  thing,"  he  went  on  presently,  "  that  I  can 
do  for  her  is  to  give  her  all  the  fame,  all  the  comfort, 
all  the  rest,  I  can.  And  now —  he  stopped. 
"Then  when  she  finds  out  what  has  happened  here  it 
will  make  her  far  more  bitter  against  religion  if  she  has 
been  made  to  burn  the  play.  I  feel  sure  she  has  not 
done  it.  During  the  last  few  days  I  have  begun  to 
hope — I  know  it  is  wrong — but  to  hope  that  it  is  not 
burnt  after  all.  Can  I  leave  it  so?  " 

They  were  both  silent.  Then  Horace  looked  up 
with  a  fresh  light  in  his  eyes. 

"/  am  going  to  answer,"  he  said,  "not  you.  I 
believe  you  did  send  those  seven  devils  down  there. " 
He  pointed  under  the  chair.  ' '  Help  me  to  make  sure 
of  this  thing  being  destroyed  without  hurting  my 
wife  more  than  I  can  help." 

"I  don't  want  this  to  trouble  you,"  said  the  curi. 


150  Horace    BlaKe 

"Write  to  her  now  to  ask  if  she  has  done  it  or  not, 
and  if  she  has  not  done  it,  then  you  can  insist  if 
necessary.  But  perhaps  it  is  already  done." 

Horace  took  up  his  writing-case  instantly,  and 
wrote  an  affectionate  line  to  his  wife.  He  filled  it  out 
by  warm  words  of  Stephen  Tempest. 

"You  are  suffering  to-day,"  said  the  old  man. 

"I  am  no  good,"  said  Horace.  "I  had  one  thing 
to  sacrifice,  and  I  have  not  done  that  with  decent 
grace." 

"God  does  not  expect  the  most  beautiful  manners 
from  us." 

"I  keep,"  said  Horace,  "thinking  of  one  horror 
after  another,  sins  I  forgot  to  mention,  any  one  of 
which  would  have  seemed  a  dark  blot  on  his  past  to 
almost  any  man." 

"Don't  compare  yourself  with  any  man.  Only 
compare  yourself  with  God,"  said  the  cure,  "and  you 
will  soon  think  of  Him  and  not  of  yourself. " 

"I  meant  to  ask  to  go  to  Holy  Communion  to- 
morrow, but  I  'm  not  fit  to  go. " 

"You'll  never  be  fit." 

"You  mean  that  I  am  to  go  to-morrow." 

"You  ought  to.  Ah,  my  son !  I  know  it  goes  hard 
now.  You  were  dazzled  by  the  first  light.  It  was 
bright  and  distinct;  now  you  see  more  clearly.  Just 
leave  all  you  can  to  God;  be  as  childlike  as  you  can. 
Pray  and  trust. " 

Horace  looked  at  him,  and  to  the  cure  that  look 
recalled  the  image  of  the  cripple  by  the  waters  of 
Siloam  looking  at  Christ. 

"The  Divine  Potter  is  stern  in  moulding  this  clay, 
he  thought ;  "but  it  is  most  wonderful,  this  work  of  the 
Most  High."  Nothing  to  the  old  man  was  more 


Horace   BlaKe  151 

satisfactory  than  the  efforts  Horace  had  made — efforts 
that  had  often  left  him  terribly  exhausted — to  repair 
the  evils  he  had  done  in  the  past.  Many  hours  a  day 
he  had  dragged  wearily  through  the  often  rather 
hopeless  correspondence  that  this  involved. 

They  were  silent  together  as  only  friends  can  be. 

"Poor  child!"  murmured  Horace  at  length. 

"A  good  child,"  said  the  cure. 

"Poor  little  girl!"  said  her  father. 

"We  must  pray  for  a  good  marriage." 

"In  England  it  is  all  left  to  chance." 

"Or  to  love,"  said  the  old  man. 

"That  's  the  ideal,"  said  Horace,  "to  which  men 
are  content  to  chance  their  daughters.  It  would  be 
more  paternal  to  leave  them  a  dot.  I  can  only  trust 
Trix  to  the  generosity  of  my  wife. " 

"That  is  not  likely  to  fail  now,"  said  the  cure. 

Then  there  came  through  the  gate  the  said  Trix  and 
Stephen  Tempest.  It  was  at  that  moment  that  it 
flashed  into  Horace's  mind  that  they  looked  uncom- 
monly well  together,  those  tall,  straight,  active  young 
people.  His  imagination,  always  inflammable,  caught 
at  the  idea.  He  made  a  great  effort  to  efface  the 
impression  of  his  irritability  that  afternoon  and 
exerted  all  his  charm,  talking  brightly  with  the  three 
sitting  near  him. 

"  Of  course  that  's  it, "  said  Stephen  to  himself  that 
night.  "Horace  Blake  has  become  a  Roman  Catholic 
— the  old  cure  has  got  hold  of  him.  Good  heavens!" 
Stephen  did  not  like  the  idea  one  bit.  The  sacristan 
had  called  Horace  a  saint;  he  had  been  going  to  the 
church;  he  had  grown  amazingly  patient;  he  pulled 
himself  up  in  his  talk;  finally,  he  had  told  his  wife  to 
burn  his  last  work  of  genius — perhaps  his  greatest 


152  Horace    BlaKe 

work  of  all.  Stephen's  cultured  bias  was  on  the 
religious  side  in  life.  He  was  disillusioned,  like  so 
many  of  his  generation,  with  materialism;  he  felt  the 
claims  of  a  more  human  instinctive  view  of  life;  he 
was  attracted  to  the  literary  school  in  France  that 
believed  in  family  ties  and  racial  traditions  as  the 
safest  and  the  best  hope  for  a  country.  He  rather 
dreaded  the  desolate  waste  of  arid  speculation, 
and  thought  he  could  tread  in  the  worn  paths  of 
human  thought  without  too  much  analysis.  What 
had  satisfied  his  forefathers  would  surely  serve 
for  his  own  needs.  His  admiration  for  Horace's 
work  was  aesthetic,  but  he  cared  so  much  for  his 
brilliant  dramatisation  that  he  wanted,  if  he  could, 
as  he  had  said,  to  discover  that  Blake  was  only 
destroying  modern  evils  before  reconstructing. 
All  this  was  more  latent  than  explicit  in  a  mind 
that  had  plenty  of  daily  occupation  without  troub- 
ling itself  over  metaphysics  or  theology.  But  there 
were  old  Protestant  strains  in  Stephen's  blood,  and 
there  was  the  fastidiousness  of  culture,  and  he  was 
startled,  as  many  more  religious  men  may  be,  at  the 
knocking  up,  as  it  were,  against  the  strange  spiritual. 
To  see  human  nature  on  the  anvil  and  supernatural 
forces  at  work  on  it  is  a  trial.  Stephen  disliked  it  very 
much.  Again  he  wished  that  he  had  never  met  Mrs. 
Blake,  and,  above  all,  that  she  had  never  sent  him  on 
such  a  voyage  of  inquiry.  He  had  discovered  without 
prying  and  unwillingly — most  unwillingly — what  she 
would  mind  infinitely. 

And  Trix!  What  did  that  dear  child  think  of  all 
this,  think  of  this  old  soft-toned  cure,  with  the  kind 
eyes,  who  would  have  been  so  perfectly  in  his  place 
by  the  bedside  of  a  dying  fisherman,  where  his  minis- 


Horace    BlaKe  153 

trations  would  have  been  exquisite  and  appro- 
priate? Why  should  he  go  out  of  his  sphere  to  play 
the  inquisitor  and  make  an  auto  da  fe  of  Blake's 
greatest  work? 


XXI 

A   FRIEND   AT    THE   LAST   STATION 

NEXT  morning  when  Stephen  Tempest  walked 
over  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  he  met  Trix,  paddling 
on  the  sands. 

"Father  would  make  me  come  out,"  she  said. 
"Will  you  paddle  or  talk  for  a  bit?  Father  said  he 
would  read  till  dejeuner." 

"Can't  we  do  both?"  he  asked. 

Trix  shook  her  head  gravely,  and  then  smiled  as  a 
wave  rippled  over  her  white  feet.  She  came  out  of  the 
water  and  sat  down  on  a  rock  and  slipped  on  her 
sandals. 

"Now  I'll  walk  on  the  wet  side,  as  I  have  no 
stockings,  and  you  shall  go  on  the  dry.  I  want  to  talk 
about  father." 

She  was  even  less  self-conscious  than  usual.  Her 
best  hat  made  her  think  of  her  appearance,  but  in  a 
cotton  blouse,  a  short  serge  skirt,  and  no  hat,  what  was 
there  to  think  about? 

"A  most  astounding  thing  has  happened,"  said 
Trix  very  gravely,  "and  I  think  I  must  speak  to  some 
one.  I  knew  he  liked  going  to  the  church  here,  and  I 
suppose  I  ought  to  have  understood,  but  I  did  n't. 
Father  has  become  a  Roman  Catholic!  I  saw  him 
receive  the  Communion  this  morning. " 

"I  'm  not  astonished,"  said  Stephen.  "I  thought 
he  was  going  that  way." 

"And  you  know  it 's  really  nonsense,"  said  Trix. 


Horace    BlaKe  155 

"It  may  not  be  nonsense  for  the  Bretons,"  said 
Stephen;  "but  it's  preposterous  for  your  father!" 

Trix  did  not  attempt  to  analyse  this  remark. 

"It 's  a  comfort  to  have  a  friend  to  speak  to,"  she 
said,  with  a  sigh  of  relief.  "Father  is  ever  so  much 
happier  to-day,  but  it  can't  be  any  good  to  be  happy 
through  nonsense,  can  it?" 

"I  am  sorry  for  you  about  it,"  said  Stephen;  "but 
then  I  am  unhappy  about  you  altogether,  Miss  Blake. 
Why  does  he  not  let  your  mother  come?" 

" Does  mother  want  to  come?"  cried  Trix. 

"She  is  breaking  her  heart  at  being  kept  away.  I 
wonder  if  that  old  priest  does  not  want  her  to  come. 
The  very  best  of  them — and  splendid  old  fellows  they 
often  are — lose  their  heads  in  the  excitement  of  getting 
a  convert.  You  see  it  covers  up  all  their  own  little 
peccadilloes. " 

Trix  stopped  short  and  an  anxious  frown  puckered 
her  white  forehead. 

"Am  I  horribly  selfish?  I  'm  not  sure  if  I  really  do 
want  mother  to  come.  I  should  not  be  allowed  to  do  a 
thing  for  father  if  she  came.  After  all,  I  believe  it 's 
just  the  same  with  many  mothers  and  daughters." 

"Not  just  like  this,"  thought  Stephen. 

"Don't  tell  mother  what  I  have  told  you."  Then 
she  stopped.  "No,  that's  not  fair.  It  can't  be  a 
secret,  can  it?  And  yet,  what  do  you  think?  Is  it 
fair  to  him  to  tell?" 

"He  has  not  told  you  not  to  tell.  And,  considering 
his  state  of  health,  I  think  she  ought  to  be  told." 

"Very  well, "  said  Trix  slowly,  "you  don't  think  his 
mind  is  failing,  do  you?" 

"  Not  by  anything  he  says,  but  of  course  there  may 
be  weakness  on  some  points." 


156  Horace    BlaKe 

Then  suddenly  she  turned  towards  him  with  her  eyes 
brimming  with  tears.  "Tell  me  the  truth;  does  this 
illness  mean  that  he  must  die?  Mother  told  me 
nothing. " 

"The  doctors  confess  that  they  don't  understand  the 
illness,  but  they  do  think  in  the  London  hospitals  that 
it  is  incurable." 

"Just  when  I  've  learnt  to  know  him  and  to  live  for 
him,"  she  said,  looking  out  to  sea  and  trying  to  be 
brave  with  a  child's  courage. 

"Look  Trix,"  he  said,  using  her  name  uncon- 
sciously, "I  had  an  idea  just  now  that  may  have 
something  in  it.  I  want  to  find  out  what  is  the 
greatest  opinion  in  Paris  on  this  disease.  Our  men 
are  behind  theirs  in  diagnosis,  though  they  are  ahead 
of  them  in  surgery.  We  '11  get  a  Paris  man  to  come 
down  here  if  he  is  not  fit  to  go  to  Paris." 

Trix's  eyes  lit  up.  She  sprang  at  hope  with  the 
fearlessness  of  inexperience. 

"Oh  yes,  yes!"  she  said.  "I  am  sure  he  has  the 
greatest  contempt  for  all  the  big  men  he  saw  in  Lon- 
don. You  could  n't  come  back  at  the  same  time, 
could  you?" 

"I  don't  see  how  I  can,  but  I'll  try  to,"  said 
Stephen.  They  stood  still  for  a  moment. 

"  I  would  do  anything  to  help, "  he  said  very  gently. 

Trix  did  not  speak,  and  they  walked  back  together 
in  silence,  though  there  was  much  to  say. 

Horace  lying  in  the  garden  saw  them  before  they  saw 
him.  That  silence  seemed  to  his  imagination  the  sign 
he  was  vouchsafed  in  the  shadows  from  those  two 
young  souls  walking  upright  and  strong  in  the  sun- 
shine. He  also  saw  that  they  did  not  themselves 
understand  its  meaning. 


157 

It  was  Stephen's  last  evening  in  Brittany.  It  had 
been  a  good  day  for  Horace  and  he  was  able  to  get 
down  to  the  shore  by  the  rock  stairway  leaning  on 
Stephen's  arm.  At  the  water's  edge  they  were  very 
near  the  sunset  and  full  of  peace.  Blake  was  silent 
for  the  most  part,  with  his  mobile  face  at  rest,  while 
the  sunset  glory  was  reflected  in  the  light  of  his  large 
eyes.  Stephen  had  never  felt  such  close  intimacy  with 
any  two  human  beings  before,  at  least  since  he  was  a 
grown  man.  They  touched  him  infinitely,  those  two, 
in  their  devotion  to  each  other,  and  somehow  in  that 
short  hour  he  seemed  absolutely  joined  with  them. 
Then  the  good  moment  went.  A  little  cold  draught  of 
air  came  across  the  water ;  a  great  cloud  turned  leaden 
coloured  and  looked  angry.  Blake  gave  an  almost 
imperceptible  shiver ;  it  was  hard  work  getting  him  up 
the  rock  stairway.  Stephen  and  Trix  were  afraid  that 
they  had  made  a  mistake.  Horace  was  out  of  breath 
when  they  got  him  in.  As  he  sank  back  on  the  sofa 
in  his  room  he  said  to  Stephen : 

"  It  was  glorious — can't  talk  any  more — I  'm  afraid. 
Did  n't  think  I  should  get  a  friend  at  the  last  station. 
You  '11  see  my  wife.  Tell  her  everything  about  me. " 

He  laid  stress  on  the  "everything,"  and  he  looked 
up  at  Stephen  with  more  meaning  in  his  eyes  than  the 
young  man  could  decipher. 

Trix  came  down-stairs  with  Stephen.  They  spoke 
almost  as  conspirators. 

"You  '11  try  at  once  to  find  out  about  the  Paris 
doctors?" 

"I  shall  go  to  Paris  if  necessary." 

"Oh,  you  are  good  to  us.  But  he  is  rather  wonder- 
ful, is  n't  he?" 

"Very  wonderful,"  said  Stephen  fervently. 


158  Horace   BlaKe 

"I  am  so  glad  you  came,"  said  Trix,  "you  have 
really  helped  him.  He  likes  you  enormously.  Of 
course  if  mother  were  better  for  him  than  I  can  be  I 
should  want  her  to  come.  She  is  splendid  at  nursing, 
you  know.  I  hope  I  have  n't  said  anything — any- 
thing unkind  about  her,  as  if  we  did  n't  get  on?" 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Stephen  mendaciously. 

"Do  you  think,"  said  Trix,  satisfied  on  that  score 
and  going  on  to  another  question,  "that  people  will 
think  much  less  of  father  when  they  find  out  that  he 
has  become  a  Roman  Catholic?" 

What  people  thought  of  Blake  was  what  she  had 
been  taught  to  consider  as  paramount. 

"No,"  said  Stephen  promptly.  "They  will  think 
that  he  was  ill  and  that  the  priests  got  hold  of  him. " 

"But  that  will  seem  so  weak. " 

"  Men  as  ill  as  he  is  are  allowed  to  be  weak. " 

"It  would  be  weaker  still  to  go  back  upon  it?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  Stephen. 

"There  's  a  great  deal  that 's  beautiful  about  it," 
said  Trix.  "  I  almost  wish  at  moments  that  I  did  n't 
know  it  was  nonsense." 

Trix  knowing  it  was  nonsense  appealed  faintly  to 
Stephen's  sense  of  humour.  He  looked  at  her  and 
wondered  if  that  conviction  of  its  all  being  nonsense 
would  hold  out  under  what  might  prove  overwhelming 
forces.  He  doubted  it.  Trix  was  clever,  he  believed 
very  clever,  but  undeveloped.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
her  anti-religious  theories,  her  scientific  conclusions, 
had  all  been  got  by  rote,  taken  on  authority.  The 
mind  had  not  passed  that  simply  receptive  stage 
as  yet.  Her  feelings  had  been  of  much  quicker 
growth,  and  mind  and  heart  had  not  been  brought 
together. 


Horace    BlaKe  159 

"Don't  fall  into  it  yourself,"  he  said  lightly,  but 
with  intention. 

Trix  did  not  resent  this.     She  shook  her  head. 

" Isn't  it  strange,"  she  said  suddenly,  "that  a  month 
ago  I  had  never  heard  of  you?  I  must  say  'good-bye,' 
now,  Mr.  Tempest." 


XXII 

IS  THE   PLAY   BURNED? 

OTEPHEN  was  waiting  in  the  little  ante-room  of 

0  Mrs.  Blake's  club  while  kindly  alert  club  servants 
fetched  and   carried,   and   brought  in  visitors  and 
called  members  to  the  telephone,  and  looked  as  if  they 
had  great  hopes  of  pulling  this  particular  set  of  ladies 
safely  through  their  complicated  engagements  for  yet 
another  day.     Meanwhile  he  saw  a  different  scene 
much  more  clearly  than  the  one  before  his  eyes.     In 
his  inner  vision  he  was  still  on  the  sands  of  the  many- 
coloured  Breton  coast.     He  went  over  the  days  he  had 
spent  there  in  his  mind  as  he  waited  for  Mrs.  Blake. 

"I  wonder  if  I  shall  recognise  any  likeness  to  Trix 
when  I  see  her  mother  again, "  he  said  to  himself  at 
length. 

A  tall  woman  came  into  the  room  and  started. 

"If  I  had  known  you  were  here  I  should  have 
hurried  back.  Mr.  Tempest,  shall  we  go  for  a  walk?  it 
is  so  fine;  would  you  mind?" 

"  It 's  just  what  I  should  like, "  said  Stephen. 

He  felt  at  once  how  much  easier  it  would  be  to  talk 
out  walking  than  sitting  here.  They  went  by  the 
Tube  at  Kate's  suggestion  to  Hampstead  Heath, 
where  the  may  was  in  flower  and  the  scenic  landscape 
was  very  rich  and  beautiful. 

"I  hate  Hampstead — we  lived  here  years  ago," 
said  Mrs.  Blake,  "and  my  admiration  is  reluctant,  but 

1  do  admire.     Now  please  tell  me  all  you  can. " 

1 60 


Horace   BlaKe  161 

But  it  was  a  question,  not  a  narrative,  that  burst 
from  Stephen's  lips. 

"Have  you  burnt  the  play?" 

Mrs.  Blake  looked  at  him  severely. 

"  I  am  going  to  trust  you, "  she  said.  "  I  have  not 
destroyed  the  play,  but "  She  paused. 

"I  am  relieved,"  said  Tempest.  "He  gave  me 
an  awful  shock.  I  put  such  confidence  in  you  that 
I  felt  sure  you  had  not  done  it.  And  I  hope  I  did 
no  harm.  In  my  astonishment  I  lost  my  head,  and 
said  at  once  that  I  was  sure  you  would  not  burn  it> 
and  he " 

Stephen  hesitated. 

"And  he?"  repeated  Mrs.  Blake  anxiously. 

" I  think, "  said  Stephen,  turning  to  her,  smiling,  "I 
think  he  was  glad,  though  he  would  not  say  so." 

"Did  you,"  said  Kate  unflinchingly,  "see  any  signs 
of  his  mind  being  affected?" 

How  different  was  the  question  on  her  lips,  from  a 
woman  who  had  lived  so  much,  to  the  same  question 
trilled  out  by  Trix  only  waiting  to  be  reassured ! 

' '  Not  a  symptom. "  But  something  in  his  voice  did 
not  satisfy  Mrs.  Blake.  Stephen  felt  oppressed  by 
this  strong,  anxious  woman  walking  wearily  and  yet 
hurriedly  by  his  side. 

Then  in  a  voice  that  trembled  she  said : 

"There  's  no  religious  nonsense  in  this,  is  there?" 

"  Yes, "  said  Stephen,  "that  is  it.  He  has  become  a 
Roman  Catholic. " 

He  turned  towards  her  in  acute  sympathy,  and  he 
saw  on  her  face  that  this  was  the  unbearable  thing,  and 
the  thing  that  she  had  dreaded. 

"Ah!  they  Ve  got  him, "  she  said.  " Do  you  mind 
sitting  on  this  bench?" 


162  Horace  BlaKe 

He  saw  that  she  was  trembling.  She  sat  down,  and 
a  moment  later  she  burst  out : 

"Ah,  Mr.  Tempest,  is  it  not  hard?  At  least,  I 
thought  he  would  live  and  die  as  a  real  thinker,  leave 
a  great  name,  be  among  the  intellectual  giants  of  our 
time.  I  thought  he  had  intellectual  truth  at  any  rate, 
and  that  he  would  die  with  some  dignity.  He  saw  my 
father  die,  calm,  undisturbed."  And  to  herself  she 
thought:  "  His  life  has  been  too  bad  for  him  to  end  it 
with  any  dignity;  that  is  the  moral;  that  is  what  all 
men  of  judgment  will  say  of  him." 

She  strove  for  calmness,  but  her  voice  was  full  of 
bitterness. 

"  He  was  born  and  bred  a  Catholic,"  she  said.  "It 
was  my  father  who  taught  him  to  think.  He  had  far 
too  much  mind  not  to  respond  to  my  father.  The 
year  we  married  his  only  sister  went  to  be  a  Carmelite. 
He  felt  she  had  been  caught  and  fascinated.  He  was 
repelled.  Ah !  how  repellent  he  has  made  it  all  to  me 
for  years!  " 

She  checked  the  flow  of  words.  She  had  never  com- 
plained before,  why  should  she  break  down  now  and 
betray  herself  and  him  to  this  new  friend?  "It  is 
such  a  defeat,"  she  said  to  herself.  "I  have  striven 
so  hard  to  keep  Horace  up,  to  keep  him  afloat  at  all, 
and  now  I  am  defeated." 

"  I  suppose,"  she  went  on,  "  that  he  is  a  dying  saint, 
or  he  would  not  have  made  the  sacrifice,  the  sin-offer- 
ing of  a  burnt  play.  Did  they  say  that  Monsieur  was 
a  saint?  "  She  gave  a  sad  and  angry  laugh. 

"Only  the  old  sacristan  said  so — at  least,  so  Miss 
Blake  told  me." 

"Horace  Blake  has  become  a  sacristan's  saint! 
Is  n't  it  humorous?" 


Horace    DlaKe  163 

"It  is  ironic,"  said  Stephen.  "He  was  so  good  to 
me.  I  am  absolutely  devoted  to  him.  I  can't  thank 
you  enough  for  sending  me  out  there.  His  patience 
is  amazing,  his  gentleness,  the  care  he  takes  of  his 
daughter." 

"Yes,  a  saint,"  murmured  Kate. 

"Don't,"  cried  Stephen,  "don't  Mrs.  Blake;  it 
hurts  me  and  it  hurts  you  far  more." 

"Then  you  are  glad  that  the  priests  have  caught 
him?" 

"No,  indeed;  nor  is  Miss  Blake.  But  I  do  feel  it  is 
different  now  I  know  that  he  was  born  and  bred  in 
their  creed.  I  am  very  sorry,  but  it  is  more  natural, 
less  painful.  You  know  that  one  cannot  but  see  that 
it  is  a  real  help  to  simple  people  who  have  it  in  their 
blood  and  in  their  bones  as  those  Breton  peasants 
have." 

"Lies  cannot  really  bring  comfort,"  said  Kate,  and 
Stephen  felt  as  if  he  were  being  scolded.  "A  religion 
can't  be  true  for  some  people  and  good  for  some  people 
if  it  is  intrinsically  false." 

She  was  silent  for  a  moment  after  that,  and  then 
said  quickly: 

"Did  he  tell  you  this  himself?" 

"  No,  Miss  Blake  told  me  that  he  had  been  to  Com- 
munion in  the  Roman  Church  that  morning.  He 
had  not  spoken  to  her  about  it.  I  could  not  see  that 
he  had  tried  to  influence  her  in  any  way. " 

He  wished  to  soothe  the  mother's  fears,  but  she  took 
no  notice. 

"  It  has  not  been  in  any  French  paper  yet, "  she  said. 
"I  have  an  excellent  French  newsagent.  But  the 
priests  are  sure  to  trumpet  it  all  over  the  place.  Did 
you  hear  it  spoken  of  there?" 


164  Horace    BlaKe 

"Oh,  no;  nobody  there  knew  anything  about  Mr. 
Blake.  He  said  himself  that  it  brought  home  to  him 
the  limits  of  his  fame. " 

"Well,  I  must  think,"  said  Mrs.  Blake,  wearily 
rising  from  her  seat.  "  Mr.  Tempest,  we  won't  speak 
of  this  at  all,  except  to  each  other. " 

"Certainly  not." 

" I  wonder  if  he  meant  me  to  know?" 

"I  thought  so,  because  he  asked  me  to  tell  you 
everything  about  him,  and  he  laid  stress  on  the 
'everything,'  and  his  look  was  very  significant." 

"He  had  not  the  courage  to  tell  me  himself,"  was 
Kate's  unspoken  comment. 

As  they  walked  back  to  the  Tube  station,  Stephen 
told  her  that  he  had  been  to  Paris  before  coming  home, 
and  why  he  had  been  there.  Kate  shook  her  head. 

"It 's  no  good,"  she  said;  "they  will  only  torture 
him  for  nothing." 

"  But  ought  it  not  to  be  tried?  "  He  detailed  all  he 
had  heard  at  the  great  hospital  he  had  visited.  ' '  They 
affirm  that  Dr.  Saumur  has  made  cures  at  the  most 
advanced  stages. " 

"  I  was  so  strongly  advised  by  four  doctors  to  leave 
him  alone, "  said  Kate  in  a  suffering  voice.  "But,  of 
course,  if  there  is  the  remotest  chance  we  must  try  it. 
It  was  astonishingly  good  of  you  to  take  so  much 
trouble." 

"I  would  take  a  thousand  times  more  if  it  could  be 
of  the  least  use!"  exclaimed  Stephen. 

"I  think  in  that  case  I  should  have  to  insist  on 
going  to  him — and  perhaps " 

She  stopped.  They  had  reached  the  Tube  station 
and  they  hardly  spoke  a  dozen  words  afterwards,  but 
he  was  to  come  to  the  club  next  day. 


Horace    BlaKe  165 

To  reopen  it  again!  All  thought  of  the  religious 
question  was  lost  in  that ;  to  reopen  the  question  of  the 
horrible  examinations  to  excite  his  imagination  with 
false  hopes,  and  yet,  if  they  were  not  false? — if  he  were 
to  rise  up  again  and  throw  off  sickness  and  all  its 
weakness,  what  might  he  not  do  before  he  had  to  die? 
What  might  he  not  leave  behind  him? 

By  the  next  morning  she  was  keenly,  intensely  bent 
on  the  scheme  of  the  Paris  doctor.  She  was  deter- 
mined to  go  to  Paris  at  once  and  tell  the  story  of  the 
illness  to  Dr.  Saumur. 

That  night  she  started.  Before  leaving  she  put  a 
copy  of  the  play  in  the  safe  at  their  bank.  Before  she 
saw  Stephen  she  had  written  to  Horace  to  say  that  the 
MS.  was  destroyed,  and  it  was  destroyed.  It  had  not 
taken  too  long  to  copy  that  last  act.  A  typist  she 
could  trust  had  worked  hard,  and  she  herself  had 
worked  harder.  The  two  first  acts  of  the  play  had 
been  copied  before  the  last  act  reached  London. 


XXIII 

TO  PROPOSE  TO  GO  AND  TO  BE  TOLD  NOT  TO 

DR.  SAUMUR,  the  great  Paris  specialist,  did  seem 
to  Kate  to  throw  new  light  on  the  possibilities 
of  recovery,  although  he  did  not  say  that  he  felt  the 
least  hope  himself.  She  spoke  on  Dr.  Saumur's 
telephone  in  English  to  Roberts,  asking  questions  for 
the  great  man;  at  the  same  time,  she  warned  Roberts 
to  keep  the  matter  to  himself.  They  were  different 
questions  from  any  that  had  been  asked  before,  and 
that  in  itself  seemed  to  have  a  hopeful  significance. 
But  as  she  walked  about  Paris  in  the  afternoon 
trying  to  distract  her  mind  and  to  tire  her  body  so  as 
to  get  to  sleep  at  night,  she  wondered  if  this  different 
method  of  attacking  the  disease  was  much  more  than  a 
futile  effort.  New  names,  perhaps,  for  the  same 
things,  and  a  Sherlock-Holmes-like  attention  to  a 
different  class  of  detail,  was  it  any  good?  The  doctor 
was  to  let  her  know  in  twenty-four  hours  whether, 
after  a  careful  study  of  his  notes  on  the  case,  he 
thought  there  was  any  use  at  all  in  disturbing  Horace 
by  fresh  examinations  which  he  owned  must  give  him 
more  pain.  Meanwhile  Kate  tried  in  vain  to  take  an 
interest  in  Paris;  and  her  thoughts  flew  back  to  the 
days  when  her  father  had  brought  Anne  and  herself  to 
see  Paris  for  the  first  time — only  its  great  historic 
sights,  for  it  never  occurred  to  the  philosopher  that 
Kate  and  Anne  might  have  wished  to  see  the  shops  as 
well,  and  the  girls  had  never  suggested  such  a  thing. 

166 


Horace    BlaKe  167 

Standing  under  the  dome  of  the  Invalides,  Kate's 
heart  beat  for  a  moment  with  a  remembrance  of  the 
wild  excitement  of  her  girlhood.  Napoleon  had  been 
her  first  hero.  In  her  teens  she  had  been  out  to  find  a 
demi-god,  and  she  had  not  been  anxious  lest  the  demi- 
god should  prove  to  have  had  low  elements  in  his 
composition.  She  stood  at  the  rail  now,  looking 
down  on  the  great  tomb,  and  thinking  as  the  minutes 
went  by  more  of  her  past  self  than  of  anything  else. 
"We  were  not  brought  up  to  understand  life,"  she 
thought.  "It  's  not  good  to  stand  apart  as  we  did; 
it  only  makes  more  suffering  in  the  long  run." 

As  she  turned  away  she  could  not  keep  from  the 
thought  that  tried  her  so  terribly.  If  she  wrote  to 
Horace  to  ask  him  to  see  the  specialist,  should  she 
propose  to  come  herself  at  the  same  time ?  To  propose 
to  go  if  she  were  not  wanted !  To  propose  to  go  and  to 
be  told  not  to ! 

She  was  yearning  to  get  to  him,  but  she  could  not 
face  the  possibility  of  such  a  rebuff — a  rebuff  that 
would  make  a  real  rupture,  and  she  thought  him 
capable  of  telling  her  that  she  was  not  wanted. 

It  was  very  hot  that  night,  much  hotter  than  it  had 
been  in  the  day.  Kate  was  feeling  ill  as  well  as  tired. 
Her  head  was  aching,  her  eyes  seemed  framed  in  pain. 
Usually  she  was  very  strong,  and  her  nerves  were  parti- 
cularly well  controlled;  but  to-night  in  this  hot  alien 
city,  so  entirely  alone,  while  waiting  for  Dr.  Saumur's 
opinion,  she  lost  her  self-restraint.  A  sudden  gust  of 
anger  took  possession  of  her  once  more.  Was  it  not 
intolerable,  horrible,  that  after  all  she  had  suffered, 
all  she  had  forgiven,  all  she  had  done  for  him,  he  had 
sent  her  away  from  him  at  the  end?  He  might  have 


168  Horace    BlaKe 

spared  her  that,  he  might  at  least  have  thought  of 
what  it  would  look  like  to  the  world.  Then  in  a 
moment  she  passed  from  anger  to  yearning,  and  half 
falling  asleep,  she  seemed  to  see  him  holding  out 
imploring  hands,  asking  for  her  help  in  some  appalling 
agony.  Waking  into  consciousness  of  the  nightmare, 
she  got  up,  determined  not  to  risk  such  a  horror  in 
sleep  as  that  again.  She  shivered  in  the  heat  as  she 
stood  by  the  bed  and  looked  at  her  watch.  It  took 
some  moments  before  she  could  read  it;  her  eyes 
seemed  blurred.  Three  o'clock — not  much  more 
darkness.  The  doctor's  answer  would  come  in  the 
course  of  to-day:  even  if  he  advised  the  examin- 
ation, would  it  be  cruel  to  disturb  Horace  with  it? 
That  question  became  the  predominant  one  for  some 
time,  and  then  again  the  misery  of  her  own  position 
flooded  her  mind. 

When,  a  few  hours  later,  Dr.  Saumur's  letter  was 
taken  to  her  room,  she  could  not  understand  what  was 
said  to  her.  The  hotel  servants  telephoned  to  Dr. 
Saumur  that  the  lady  to  whom  he  had  written  was  too 
ill  to  read  his  letter.  The  great  man  sent  a  doctor  at 
once  who  diagnosed  Kate's  condition  as  the  result  of  a 
touch  of  the  sun  the  day  before.  He  insisted  on 
absolute  silence  and  darkness,  and  a  nurse  to  ensure 
both. 


XXIV 

MUST   I    SEE   THIS    PARIS   MAN? 

PEACE  had  faded  from  Horace's  face. 
"Must  I  see  this  Paris  man?"  he  asked  the 
cure. 

"You  cannot  be  obliged  to  see  him." 

"It  is  so  hard,"  said  Blake;  "they  can  do  nothing. 
They  will  torture  me,  and  then  I  can't  bear  the 
thought  of  false  hopes.  If  it  begins  I  know  I  shall 
hope  to  live.  You  understand  that  it  is  easier  to  bear 
the  inevitable?  I  know  I  shall  go  to  pieces  under  it. 
I  shall  lose  my  peace.  I  cannot  see.  .  .  . 

"God  will  take  care  of  you,  and  if  your  wife  wishes 
it,  and  the  child?" 

"I  have  been  praying  about  it  all  the  morning," 
said  Horace,  "  and  I  can't  believe  it  is  God's  will  for 
me." 

"My  poor  son,  my  poor  son!"  said  the  old  man. 
"I  do  understand  that  this  is  a  terrible  moment." 
But  in  his  heart  the  cur£  wanted  the  great  Paris 
doctor  to  come.  Of  course,  he  would  know  more  than 
the  London  doctors.  He  dreamed  for  the  moment 
of  Horace  restored  to  life,  and  while  he  trembled  at  the 
idea,  he  felt  that  the  whole  history  had  been  so  amaz- 
ing that  he  must  not  put  bounds  to  his  faith. 

At  last  Horace  decided  to  let  Saumur  come,  and 
Trix  was  full  of  joy  when  she  heard  the  news. 

But  from  that  moment  her  father  became  more 
difficult ;  it  was  hard  to  please  him,  though  she  saw  that 

169 


170  Horace   BlaKe 

he  struggled  to  be  pleased.  Trix  was  thoroughly  dis- 
heartened at  last.  Roberts  felt  the  irritation  to  be 
returning  in  double  force  even  when  most  restrained, 
and  at  moments  it  seemed  as  if  it  must  burst  out. 

There  was  no  light  in  Horace's  soul  now,  for  the  joy 
and  peace  of  the  early  days  had  become  clouded. 
"  He  has  to  live  in  the  dark  for  a  time, "  thought  his  old 
friend.  "May  God  shorten  it." 

To  the  sick  man  it  seemed  as  if  the  darkness  had 
increased  with  the  disturbance  of  his  peace  by  this 
new  plan  of  his  wife's.  That  his  will  never  really 
failed  was  the  conviction  of  the  experienced  old  priest 
who  kept  very  close  to  him.  There  were  terrible 
moments  of  depression,  and  then  of  this  new  hope  in 
which  he  never  really  believed.  The  results  of  old 
bad  habits  were  there ;  his  mind  at  moments  seemed  a 
prey  to  the  thoughts  his  will  detested.  He  was  usually 
at  peace  in  the  church,  but  sometimes  even  that 
failed. 

The  patient's  temperature  was  an  anxiety  to 
Roberts  during  these  days.  He  began  to  wish  for  the 
responsibility  to  be  taken  off  his  shoulders,  even  by  a 
Frenchman.  He  saw  that  Horace  was  tormenting 
himself  horribly  about  the  coming  visit. 

Trix  would  occasionally  try  to  get  at  Roberts's  mind. 

"He  can't  let  himself  look  at  it  easily,  miss;  he  does 
not  believe  in  it,  and  then  at  moments  he  sort  of  half 
believes  in  it.  I  wish  we  had  him  at  home,"  said 
Roberts. 

Trix  had  been  so  excited  at  the  idea  that  she  and 
Stephen  Tempest  had  plotted  a  splendid  plan,  and 
now,  instead  of  its  bringing  him  hope  and  comfort,  it 
seemed  merely  to  increase  the  gloom.  She  was  very 
miserable,  very  unhappy,  and  her  heart  turned  to  the 


Horace   BlaKe  171 

only  thing  that  seemed  to  comfort  her  father.  She 
had  lately  sat  for  an  hour  at  a  time  in  the  church 
with  him,  and  felt  there  a  certain  sense  of  peace.  And 
then  she  talked  to  the  cure,  and  presently  to  the 
vicaire  and  to  the  sacristan,  about  the  great  French 
doctor,  who  was  coming  to  cure  her  father.  And  they 
all  believed  that  healing  must  come  out  of  Paris  if  it 
were  to  come  from  anywhere,  and  they  all  told  her  they 
would  pray  for  her  father's  cure,  and  they  were  very 
sweet  and  gentle  to  her,  for  their  kind  hearts  ached  for 
the  child. 

The  days  and  nights  dragged  on,  for  the  great  man 
wanted  Roberts  to  give  the  patient  a  special  treat- 
ment before  the  examination. 

"I  can't  bear  it,"  said  Horace  when  he  woke  one 
morning,  and  Roberts  did  not  like  the  way  he  said  it. 

For  many  weeks  the  cure  had  wondered  if  he  ought 
to  urge  Blake  to  ask  his  wife  to  come.  Was  there  some 
mystery  of  feeling  between  the  two  which  he  had  not 
yet  fathomed?  Was  there  an  unconscious  reluctance 
to  see  the  woman  he  had  wronged  so  deeply?  ' '  Those 
who  repent  before  God, "  he  said  to  himself,  "will  not 
always  repent  before  a  woman. "  That  was  what  the 
friend  and  counsellor  sought  to  understand,  and  he 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  remain  ignorant. 
In  dealing  with  others  he  often  thought  that  he  must 
not  try  to  see  too  far.  One  step  at  a  time,  he  said  to 
himself,  and  what  steps  had  not  Blake  mounted 
already?  But  Horace's  reserve  on  the  subject  of  his 
wife's  coming  did  in  the  end  melt  quite  suddenly. 

The  cure  was  sitting  with  the  sick  man,  who  was  in 
bed  that  day  by  Roberts's  advice,  when  at  last  Horace 
opened  the  question  himself.  He  was  not  looking  or 
speaking  quite  as  usual ;  he  did  not  seem  to  weigh  his 


172  Horace    BlaKe 

own  words.  They  had  talked  of  very  little  things  for 
some  minutes,  and  then  had  fallen  into  silence. 

"I  want  my  wife,"  said  Horace  suddenly,  speaking 
fretfully,  like  a  child. 

The  curb's  face  brightened. 

"  She  ought  to  be  here;  it  is  her  right  place."' 

"She  is  in  Paris, "  said  Horace. 

"All  the  easier  then. " 

"I  can't  understand  it, "  said  Horace,  looking  down 
as  he  spoke.  ' '  Dr.  Saumur  says  nothing  of  her  coming, 
and  she  has  not  written  since  she  left  London.  I  can't 
help  thinking,"  he  went  on,  and  his  wasted  hands 
picked  at  the  sheet,  " — thinking  what  may  be  morbid. 
Do  you  know,  I  feel  as  if  this  time  away  from  me  may 
have  changed  her.  She  may  have  realised  me  and 
thrown  me  over  at  last.  How  can  I  ask  her  to  come  if 
she  shrinks  from  me?  How  could  I  endure  her  in  the 
room  if  she  were  changed  to  me?  As  long  as  I  wanted 
to  play  that  I  was  not  dying  I  could  not  bear  to  read 
the  truth  in  her  face.  Then  for  a  time  I  felt  as  if  I 
could  not  have  the  courage  to  be  with  her  while  I  was 
making  the  great  change  in  my  life,  knowing  how  she 
would  hate  it.  But  now,  M.  le  Cure",  God  knows  how 
I  want  her,  and  I  dare  not  ask  her  to  come."  He 
shook  his  head  with  a  dreary  obstinacy. 

"This is  all  morbid, "  said  the  cure.  "Believe me,  a 
woman  who  has  been  to  you  what  Mrs.  Blake  has 
been  would  never  fail  you  now. " 

"I  feel  as  if  she  were  angry  with  me, "  said  Horace, 
with  the  strange  look  of  clairvoyance  that  is  not 
uncommon  with  sick  people. 

The  cure  was  puzzled. 

Horace  murmured  again,  "  I  want  my  wife.  I  want 
her  to  sit  in  that  chair  and  then  to  put  her  hand  on  my 


Horace    BlaKe  173 

forehead.  I  want — "  He  was  silent,  and  then  he 
said:  "I  can't  understand  how  she  bore  with  me.  It 
seems  so  much  more  natural  that  she  would  give  me 
up." 

"No,  no,  no,"  said  the  cure. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Horace,  a  faint  smile  breaking 
over  his  face.  ' '  I  wanted  somebody  to  say  that. " 

Roberts  was  waiting  for  the  cure  in  the  next  room. 
The  door  being  shut,  the  man-nurse  looked  anxiously 
at  the  old  priest. 

"Did  he  mention  Mrs.  Blake,  M.  le  Cure?" 

"He  wants  her  to  come,"  said  the  cure. 

"I  had  orders  not  to  tell  him  that  she  is  ill,  but  he 
will  be  angry  when  he  finds  out  that  he  has  been 
deceived.  And  I  am  sure  he  guesses  something,  and 
he  looks  awful  when  I  take  him  in  the  letters  and 
there  's  nothing  from  her. " 

"I  hope  it 's  not  serious — the  illness?" 

" It  was  sunstroke,  and  she  was  bad  at  first;  she  has 
been  kept  in  the  dark  with  ice  on  her  head  for  a  week, 
and  they  think  she  is  doing  well. " 

"If  she  is  quite  out  of  danger  he  ought  to  be  told 
that  she  has  been  ill,"  said  the  cure  firmly.  "It  is 
better  to  have  that  amount  of  agitation  than  a  mis- 
understanding. " 

Roberts  shook  his  head: 

"One  must  obey  orders,"  he  said. 

The  cure  left  him,  resolved  that  if  next  day  brought 
no  change  in  the  orders  from  Paris,  he  would  himself 
write  to  Dr.  Saumur. 

A  pale  and  very  tired  Roberts  met  the  cure  at  the 
door  of  the  hotel  next  morning. 

" It  has  been  an  awful  night, "  he  said.     "The  Paris 


174  Horace   BlaKe 

doctor  is  coming  the  day  after  to-morrow;  it 's  quite 
time.  Mrs.  Blake  comes  with  him. 

"Ought  I  to  see  Mr.  Blake?" 

"You  always  do  him  good,"  said  Roberts  warmly, 
"and  I  '11  go  for  a  turn  if  you  '11  stay  with  him,  M.  le 
Cure*.  He  is  in  no  pain  now ;  it  would  kill  him  if  it  were 
continuous. " 

Horace's  face  lit  up  as  the  curb  came  in.  A  pale 
smile  showed  up  the  worn,  exaggerated  lines  of  the 
features. 

"She  is  coming  the  day  after  to-morrow;  she  has 
not  been  well  and  was  n't  allowed  to  do  anything,  even 
write.  But  she  will  motor  out  here  with  Dr.  Saumur. 
They  think  the  change  will  do  her  good.  I  have  made 
sure  of  that.  I  insisted  that  Roberts  should  telephone 
again  to  make  sure. "  He  seemed  excited,  and  talked 
quickly  of  a  number  of  details  as  to  Kate's  room  and 
spoke  with  irritation  of  the  difficulty  of  getting  a  large 
one  on  the  side  with  the  best  view  of  the  sea  and  the 
islands. 

In  fact,  the  manageress  and  the  staff  generally  had 
by  now  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  wife  who  had 
so  long  neglected  the  dying  man  was  a  fine  lady  for 
whom  nothing  was  good  enough. 

Trix  came  in  with  two  large  bits  of  green  pottery 
which  Horace  wanted  for  Kate's  room.  They  were 
approved. 

"That  one  for  red  roses;  the  other  for  white  lilies," 
he  said. 

The  cure  felt  that  there  was  a  febrile  touch  in  poor 
Horace's  apparent  pleasure  in  these  details.  His  eyes 
were  large  and  shining. 

"  I  wrote  her  a  card.  I  put :  'Can't  you  come  your- 
self?' And  then  to-day  her  doctor  telephoned  that  she 


Horace   BlaKe  175 

had  been  ill,  but  that  he  would  let  her  motor  out  with 
Dr.  Saumur.  She  will  be  sitting  where  you  are  the 
day  after  to-morrow." 

The  cure  found  it  harder  to  restrain  tears  than  he 
had  ever  found  it  in  Horace's  company  before. 

At  last  Roberts  came  in — to  show  that  he  was  again 
on  duty.  He  glanced  at  the  cure,  who  understood 
that  the  patient  had  talked  enough  and  rose  to  leave 
the  room. 

Horace  looked  up  at  him  as  he  said  "good-bye" 
with  terrible  anguish  in  his  face. 

"Such  a  night,"  he  murmured.  Then,  shyly,  but 
with  an  absence  of  reticence  that  was  very  rare  in  him 
about  his  spiritual  actions.  "The  pain  in  the  night 
I  offer  in  expiation  for  the  wrong  I  have  done  to  Kate : 
in  the  day  for  the  wrong  I  have  done  to  Trix — but 
I  shan't  have  to  bear  it  much  longer  now." 

To  the  cure's  surprise  he  was  asked  early  next 
morning  to  bring  Holy  Communion  to  Mr.  Blake. 
Horace  had  had  a  better  night  and  felt  better.  He 
looked  much  more  peaceful.  Indeed,  his  pulse  was  a 
little  stronger,  and  in  the  afternoon  he  got  up  and 
went  out.  Leaning  on  Roberts  and  with  Trix  beside 
him,  he  reached  the  presbytery.  The  vicaire  hurried 
out  with  the  old  armchair,  and  they  put  it  just 
round  the  corner  of  the  house  in  view  of  the  sea.  The 
day  had  been  hot,  but  cool  airs  now  blew  from  the 
north  and  ruffled  the  water. 

"I  was  dreading  the  examination,"  said  Horace, 
"but  to-day  I  feel  stronger. "  He  was  silent.  "God 
has  been  amazingly  good  to  me,"  he  said  presently. 
"I  don't  feel  the  joy  in  His  goodness  that  I  felt  at 
first,  but  somewhere  in  me  I  am  at  peace." 


176  Horace    BlaKe 

"Yes,"  said  the  curi,  whose  own  peace  was  main- 
tained in  the  midst  of  constantly  increasing  suffering. 

"Even  what  ought  to  trouble  me,  troubles  me 
little  to-day.  I  can  leave  my  wife  to  God.  'Forgive 
and  you  shall  be  forgiven,'  are  the  words  that  always 
haunt  me  when  I  think  of  her.  And — and  she  comes 
to-morrow.  I  don't  think  I  shall  be  able  to  tell  her 
much.  He  faltered.  His  look  had  become  misty  and 
dulled ;  he  seemed  to  be  trying  to  see  something  more 
clearly.  He  did  not  hear  Roberts  coming  along  the 
gravel  to  help  him  back,  and  he  forgot  to  say  good- 
night to  the  cure. 

"My  feet  are  cold,"  he  said  to  Roberts  in  a  dull 
voice.  The  vicaire  helped  Roberts  to  take  him  back 
to  the  hotel,  and  there  again  there  was  no  parting 
word. 


XXV 

IS    HE   DYING? 

HPRIX  had  been  reading  Quentin  Durward  aloud 
1  to  her  father,  and  then  he  had  talked  of  his 
boyhood  and  how  he  and  Mary  had  first  read  it 
together.  It  had  been  a  delightful  evening,  and  he 
was  in  no  pain.  As  she  went  up  to  her  room  she  saw 
Roberts  speaking  to  the  manageress. 

"I  don't  want  to  frighten  her,"  he  was  saying  in  a 
low  voice.  "I  may  be  mistaken,  but  I  have  tele- 
graphed to  Mrs.  Blake  and  I  should  like  to  have 
someone  sitting  up  to-night  who  could  fetch  the  doctor 
and  the  cure." 

At  two  in  the  morning  the  presbytery  bell  was 
tinkling.  Roberts  had  been  right;  the  blood-poison- 
ing he  had  detected  had  spread  rapidly,  the  body  was 
already  swollen  when  the  two  physicians  arrived,  and 
the  physician  of  the  body  soon  gave  his  place  to  M. 
le  Cure*. 

Horace  lay  with  his  eyes  shut,  breathing  heavily. 
The  old  man  stood  watching  him  in  silence,  and  then 
his  trembling  hand  caressed  the  thin  one  that  lay  on 
the  coverlet ;  it  was  getting  cold. 

Presently  Horace  opened  his  eyes  and  gazed  round 
him  with  a  look  of  fear.  Then  it  seemed  to  the 
experienced  onlooker  as  if  the  will  that  had  failed  so 
miserably  was  passing  through  one  more  struggle, 
and  he  yearned  to  help  him.  Whatever  the  strug- 
gle was  it  lasted  but  a  moment,  and  then  his  eyes 
12  177 


1 78  Horace    BlaKe 

were  fixed  on  the  cure's  face  with  a  wistful  look  of 
resignation. 

"I  have  brought  you  Holy  Communion,  my  dear 
son." 

Horace  raised  himself  with  a  great  effort. 

"He  cannot  get  up,"  said  Roberts  anxiously. 

"Lie  still,"  said  the  curb  with  authority. 

Horace  was  still  and  two  great  tears  lay  on  the 
wasted  cheeks. 

Trix  was  brought  in  by  the  manageress. 

"  He  is  to  receive  le  bon  Dieu, "  she  had  said  to  the 
child  when  she  woke  her. 

She  had  dressed  quickly  while  the  usually  voluble 
Frenchwoman  helped  her  in  silence. 

"Is  he  dying?"  faltered  Trix,  and  a  look  of  terror 
came  into  her  face. 

"It  seems  so ;  be  brave, "  said  the  other,  while  ready 
tears  of  sympathy  welled  into  her  eyes. 

Trix  as  in  a  dream  came  into  the  room,  which 
seemed  full  of  people.  The  cure  with  his  stole  on  was 
standing  by  a  little  table  on  which  were  a  crucifix  and 
candles  and  some  white  flowers.  There  was  a  faint 
odour  of  some  sort  in  the  room,  although  the  great 
window  was  wide  open  and  an  infinite  number  of  stars 
were  visible. 

She  felt  separated  by  an  enormous  distance  from  the 
figure  on  the  bed.  A  strange  man  was  kneeling  near 
the  door  and  a  nun.  She  hardly  noticed  them,  but 
she  also  knelt  down.  The  cure  spoke  in  Latin,  and  the 
nun  answered.  The  cure  gave  Horace  Holy  Com- 
munion. After  that  there  was  silence  for  a  few 
moments,  and  then  Horace  said  something  that  Trix 
could  not  understand.  There  was  a  look  on  her 
father's  face  that  frightened  her,  a  light  that  baffled 


Horace    BlaKe  179 

her.  Then  all  expression  faded  and  he  breathed  with 
still  greater  difficulty.  Roberts  raised  him  up  and 
made  a  sign  to  the  priest  who  was  between  Horace  and 
the  window.  He  understood,  and  came  on  the  other 
side.  Roberts  held  him  towards  the  air  and  the  sky. 

The  dying  man  murmured  something  unintelligible, 
with  a  look  of  distress. 

Then  the  priest  blessed  him  and  held  up  the  cruci- 
fix. His  eyes  were  fixed  upon  it,  while  the  breathing 
became  more  and  more  terribly  laboured.  A  few 
moments  later  the  look  of  distress  suddenly  passed; 
something  had  relaxed.  The  face  was  instantly 
younger. 

"He  is  better,"  thought  Trix. 

The  doctor  and  Roberts  looked  at  each  other. 

"You  must  come  away,  my  child, "  said  the  manag- 
eress very  firmly,  and  taking  Trix's  hand  drew  her  out 
of  the  room. 

The  old  cure  followed  them  into  the  little  sitting- 
room  where  she  had  been  reading  Quentin  Durward 
to  her  father  that  evening.  The  book  lay  open  on  the 
table.  There,  too,  the  windows  were  open,  the  dawn 
was  faintly  suggested  on  the  sea  and  sky. 

"He  is  better,"  said  Trix  in  a  terrified  voice  to  the 
priest. 

The  cure  drew  her  towards  the  window. 

"  It  is  hard  for  you,  my  dear  child,  but  for  him " 

"Is  he  dead?" 

"Yes;  God  has  taken  him." 

Trix  sat  down,  absolutely  dazed. 

"He  would  have  suffered  terribly  if  he  had  lived. 
He  has  borne  all  he  could  bear.  To-night  he  had  no 
pain.  It  must  be  a  consolation  to  you  that  you  have 
been  his  comfort  to  the  end. " 


i8o  Horace   BlaKe 

Then  Trix  cried  as  freely  as  only  a  child  can  cry. 
She  was  cold,  desolate,  frightened,  and  it  seemed  as  if 
the  old  man's  voice  had  come  from  far  away.  Then 
the  manageress  made  her  drink  some  hot  coffee,  but 
she  became  hysterical. 

"I  '11  put  her  to  bed,"  said  the  Frenchwoman. 

She  led  her  from  the  room  still  dazed.  After  an 
hour  she  came  back  and  found  the  old  cure  sitting  by 
the  window. 

"Still  here ! "  she  cried.  " The  child  is  asleep.  You 
will  catch  cold. " 

"  I  spent  too  many  nights  and  dawns  on  the  sea  when 
I  was  a  boy  to  take  harm  now." 

"  Her  mother  comes  to-day, "  said  the  manageress  in 
a  doubtful  tone. 

Roberts  opened  the  door  of  the  bedroom* 

"You  can  come  in  now,  sir,"  he  said,  and  the  old 
priest  went  in. 

The  nun  had  moved  the  little  improvised  altar  to 
the  foot  of  the  bed.  The  blind  was  down.  Four  tall 
candle-sticks  held  yellow  tapers  burning  dimly. 

Horace's  face  looked  very  young ;  surely  the  light  in 
the  face  still  came  from  those  closed  eyes. 

"Take  away  the  altar  and  the  candlesticks,"  said 
the  cure  to  the  little  nun.  "Draw  up  the  blind. 
There  is  a  little  cross  next  his  heart;  that  is  enough. " 

After  taking  away  the  tall  candlesticks  the  nun 
spoke  again  in  a  puzzled  voice. 

"And  the  flowers?" 

"Leave  the  flowers.  Go,  my  good  Sister,  I  will 
stay  here  " 

Presently  Roberts  came  back  into  the  room. 

"He  did  not  suffer  to-night? "  said  the  cure  in  a  low 
voice. 


Horace    BlaKe  181 

"He  had  suffered  awfully  till  to-night,"  the  man 
answered.  "I  've  seen  deaths  of  all  sorts,  M.  le  Cure, 
but  I  never  saw  a  patient  suffer  as  much  as  Mr. 
Blake  did,  nor  with  such  pluck.  It  's  my  belief  that 
if  he  had  n't  had  such  pluck  he  'd  have  gone  out  of  his 
mind.  I  hope,  M.  le  Cure",  that  Mrs.  Blake  won't 
think  I  ought  to  have  sent  for  her  before  last  night  and 
fetched  in  the  doctor  sooner.  It  came  so  sudden. 
I  'd  no  fear  of  blood-poisoning  two  days  ago. " 

They  were  silent. 

"If  you  are  staying  here,  sir,  I  '11  just  telephone  the 
news  to  London  by  Paris,  sir.  The  papers  will  want 
to  know  at  once." 

The  old  man  had  it  on  his  lips  to  tell  him  to  wait  till 
Mrs.  Blake  came  in,  and  Roberts  understood  him. 

"Only  the  fact  of  the  death, "  he  said,  "the  rest  Mrs. 
Blake  will  settle  about." 

"You  must  not  go  out  of  the  hotel.  You  are  the 
person  to  tell  her  that  it  is  over,"  urged  the  cure. 

Then  Roberts  left,  and  the  old  priest  knelt  down  by 
the  bed  and  prayed. 

Presently  he  heard  the  sound  of  a  horn  and  a  motor 
drew  up  outside. 

He  looked  round  the  room.  There  was  nothing 
there  to  hurt  her  unnecessarily.  There  were  still  a 
few  stars;  the  dawn  had  been  grey  and  the  water 
quiet.  There  was  no  sparkle  on  the  sea. 

He  went  out  into  the  passage  and  passed  down  the 
back  stairs.  The  husband  and  wife  should  meet 
alone. 


XXVI 

TOO  LATE 

'"PHAT  long  night's  drive  was  over.  The  stars  that 
1  had  given  Kate  strength  were  fading. 

The  great  doctor  had  found  her  a  strong  woman,  and 
had  at  first  talked  science  to  her.  He  had  told  her 
plainly  after  Roberts  had  given  the  alarm  that  it  was 
of  no  use  to  take  him  out  there;  it  was  clearly  not  a 
moment  for  examinations,  for  a  new  treatment.  But 
Kate  had  insisted.  He  might  be  of  use  in  preventing 
pain. 

Once  in  the  night  drive  she  said  to  him: 

"My  husband  was  born  a  Catholic,  and  he  has  been 
reconciled. " 

"It  is  not  uncommon." 

"I  believe  he  has  made  himself  worse  with  all  that 
superstitious  nonsense." 

"Ah,  but  often  on  the  contrary  it  improves  the 
health  for  a  time.  Science  has  not  said  the  last  word 
on  the  subject,  madame.  I  have  myself  advised  send- 
ing for  a  priest,  though  I  hate  the  species,  because  I 
find  it  does  good."  He  smiled  a  subtle  smile.  "We 
must  use  anything  we  can  at  times,  must  we  not?" 

"But  if  it's  not  true?" 

"What  is  truth?     Shall  we  ask  those  stars?" 

They  became  silent  watching  the  stars  till  the  phy- 
sician went  to  sleep,  and  the  strength  and  greatness  of 
the  night  seemed  to  pass  into  Kate's  soul.  She  seemed 
to  see  herself  and  her  whole  life  on  a  different  plane, 

182 


Horace    BlaKe  183 

in  a.  different  way  than  she  had  ever  seen  them  before. 
She  lost  her  anger  at  the  thought  of  the  religious 
mummeries  she  had  dreaded.  She  lost  the  old  scarred, 
seared  bitterness  as  to  her  own  wrongs,  she  was  lifted 
into  some  different  element  from  the  air  she  had 
breathed  hitherto.  And  in  the  great  spaciousness  it 
seemed  as  if  Horace  said  something  to  her  which 
explained  the  whole  mystery  of  what  they  were  and 
had  been  to  each  other.  It  was  absolutely  clear  and 
lucid,  both  what  was  said  and  the  nearness  of  the 
speaker.  He  was  as  evidently  with  her  as  the  great 
truth  of  their  eternal  love  was  patent  to  her  whole 
being.  Time  was  not  and  space  was  not.  Then  with 
a  slight  prosaic  weary  shock  she  knew  the  limits  that 
held  her  on  earth.  She  turned  to  the  doctor. 

"I  am  sorry  to  rouse  you,"  she  said,  "but  I  have 
at  this  moment  the  strongest  conviction  that  my  hus- 
band is  dead." 

They  looked  at  their  watches.  Time  had  become  of 
enormous  importance  to  her  as  evidence  of  that  escape 
from  earthly  conditions. 

Roberts  was  in  the  doorway  of  the  long,  low,  white 
hotel. 

"You  were  right,"  said  the  doctor  as  they  saw  his 
face. 

"Is  it  over?"  said  Kate. 

Roberts  signed  assent,  and  they  went  in. 

She  went  up-stairs  guided  by  him,  and  he  left  her  at 
the  door.  She  passed  in,  and  even  then  felt  some 
relief  that  there  were  no  externals  of  religion  to  be 
seen,  but  she  did  not  look  at  the  figure  on  the  bed. 
She  crossed  the  room,  and  sat  down  by  the  window 
and  looked  at  the  sea.  Then,  with  an  immense  effort 


184  Horace    BlaKe 

she  moved  to  the  bed;  what  lay  there  seemed  to  her 
simply  horrible,  it  was  not  like  him,  this  thing;  it  was 
not  Horace,  it  was  terrible!  This  look  of  youth  was 
not  a  real  one,  it  was  a  horror,  a  grimace  to  her.  Ah !  if 
she  had  not  seen  it,  if  she  had  only  remembered  him  as 
she  had  seen  him  when  he  left  London.  She  looked  at 
the  sea  again,  the  sense  of  uplifting  on  the  drive  had 
gone;  she  thought  there  was  an  odour  of  death  in  the 
room.  She  got  up.  The  shame,  the  abasement  of 
death  appalled  her.  She  was  moving  across  the  room, 
but  as  she  passed  the  foot  of  the  bed  she  saw  another 
look,  a  look  not  of  meretricious  youth  but  of  power  in 
the  forehead  and  of  thought.  She  turned  back,  sank 
by  the  bed  and  kissed  the  cold  forehead,  and  her  heart 
cried  out  to  him  for  the  forgiveness  of  which  she  had 
given  so  large  a  measure  to  him.  Then,  fearing  lest 
that  better  impression  should  be  lost  in  the  horror  that 
had  gone  before,  she  went  out  of  the  room. 

The  manageress  saw  at  once  that  this  woman  who 
had  not  wept  would  not  need  sympathy  from  her. 

"There  was  coffee  for  madame  in  her  own  room. 
Miss  Trix  was  asleep,  worn  out." 

Kate  had  forgotten  Trix;  she  bowed  and  followed 
the  manageress  to  her  own  room  and  then  asked  for 
Roberts. 

"  Did  he  suffer  at  the  end?  " 

"Not  at  the  end;  not  all  yesterday." 

Then  she  questioned  him  closely,  and  he  told  her 
from  his  point  of  view  the  history  of  the  last  days. 

"He  used  to  refuse  the  morphia  when  the  pain  was 
at  its  worst  until  I  spoke  to  the  cure.  Then  the 
morphia  failed;  Sir  Thomas  had  said  it  would. " 

Kate  turned  from  this  detestable,  unendurable 
piece  of  horror. 


Horace    BlaKe  185 

Then  she  wrote  telegrams,  sheaves  of  telegrams. 
She  put  in  them  that  the  death  had  been  painless, 
that  the  end  had  been  entirely  unexpected,  that  Mrs. 
Blake  had  brought  the  great  specialist  from  Paris. 
That  he  had  died  very  peacefully,  uplifted  towards 
the  stars  that  shone  above  a  still  sea. 

Kate  was  intensely  conscious  of  wishing  to  get 
everything  settled  rightly.  Roberts  was  in  and  out  of 
the  room  asking  questions,  receiving  orders.  Doctor 
Saumur  came  in  to  say  "good-bye,"  and  she  was 
extraordinarily  anxious  to  be  polite — to  make  sure  that 
he  Tiad  been  made  comfortable. 

"Madame,"  he  ventured  to  say  before  he  went 
away,  "you  know  now  that  you  had  the  consolation 
of  a  psychic  communication  in  the  night  at  the  very 
moment  of  death,  do  you  not?"  She  seemed  not  to 
understand  him.  A  man  of  less  experience  would  have 
thought  her  calm. 

Presently  the  cure  was  mentioned  by  Roberts,  and 
a  look  of  intense  repulsion  appeared  on  Kate's  white 
face.  If  only  there  was  a  favourable  answer  to  her 
telegram  to  Stephen  Tempest,  the  cure  need  have  no 
more  to  do  with  the  funeral  than  if  Horace  had  died 
before  he  knew  him. 

Among  the  first  telegrams  had  been  one  asking 
Stephen  to  find  out  if  there  would  be  any  question  of 
Blake  being  buried  in  the  Abbey.  It  was  impossible 
to  say  when  anything  like  a  definite  answer  could 
reach  her. 

There  had  been  at  once  questions  of  the  formalities 
of  the  French  law,  in  which  Roberts  could  be  of  no  use. 
Mrs.  Blake  summoned  the  local  doctor.  M.  le  Cure 
sent  to  ask  if  he  could  be  of  any  use,  and  was  told  that 
Madame  Blake  thanked  him,  but  would  not  give  him 


186  Horace   BlaKe 

the  trouble.  At  last  it  seemed  as  if  she  could  think  of 
nothing  else  to  do.  Trix  was  reported  to  be  still  asleep. 

Kate  rose  from  the  table  and  stood  by  the  window. 
She  did  not  see  the  water  now  blazing  in  the  sun,  nor 
hear  the  shrill  voices  of  the  summer  visitors.  She  was 
cold,  wearied;  at  the  same  moment  half  conscious  of 
her  surroundings,  and  yet  acutely  conscious  of  her 
physical  conditions.  She  went  very  quietly  along  the 
passage  and  opened  the  door  of  Horace's  room.  The 
room  was  still  and  shaded.  As  the  day  advanced  the 
closing  of  the  outside  shutters  had  become  necessary. 
There  had  been  a  slight  change  in  the  face  lying  on 
the  smooth  pillow.  There  is  something  terrible  in  the 
unruffled  whiteness  of  the  pillow  that  supports  a  mo- 
tionless head.  The  change  in  the  face  meant  little  to 
Kate.  It  was  not  Horace's  face — it  was  Death's  face, 
not  his.  But  suddenly  as  she  stood  there  the  tension 
broke  and  a  wail  came  from  her  white  lips.  It  was 
very  low,  no  one  heard  it.  It  came  again  and  again. 
"Why  didn't  they  tell  me?  Why  was  I  allowed 
to  come  too  late?"  She  spoke  aloud  in  an  agony  of 
reproach.  Then  suddenly  she  knelt  down  and  rested 
her  head  on  the  edge  of  the  pillow. 

"Why  did  I  let  him  keep  me  away?"  She  almost 
doubted  if  she  had  failed  in  her  love  while  the  agony  of 
that  love  held  her  in  its  grasp.  The  greatest  passions 
can  hold  room  for  doubt;  the  finite  mind  is  over- 
strained by  the  passion  that  is  infinite.  She  knew 
really  that  it  was  for  his  sake  she  had  stayed  away, 
that  to  force  herself  upon  him  would  have  aggravated 
his  suffering,  might  as  far  as  she  could  tell  have  pro- 
duced even  some  mental  collapse — but  yet  she  doubted 
as  saints  doubt  in  their  own  dark  hours  whether  they 
love  God  at  all. 


Horace    BlaKe  187 

"You  did  tell  me  to  come  in  the  end,  love,  and  you 
knew  that  I  was  coming."  But  then  came  another 
wail  breaking  from  the  great  wordless  anguish  that 
possessed  her  whole  nature,  torn  asunder,  crushed  by 
pain,  half  alive  with  a  terrible  vitality,  half  dead  with 
his  death  to  whom  she  had  given  herself.  An  hour 
passed,  and  then,  not  because  anything  changed  in 
herself  or  her  suffering,  anything  made  it  more  or  less 
intolerable  to  be  there,  but  because  another  thought 
had  struck  her,  she  left  the  room.  Trix  might  be 
awake,  and  she  ought  to  go  to  her.  A  maid  met  her 
and  said  that  mademoiselle  was  awake,  and  pointed  to 
her  door.  But  when  she  got  into  the  room  she  saw 
Trix  lying  with  her  head  on  her  arm,  still  asleep.  She 
stood  for  a  moment  watching  her  and  fighting  down 
a  kind  of  repulsion  that  had  suddenly  seized  upon  her. 
Her  sorrow,  her  anguish,  were  hers  alone ;  the  child  who 
slept  so  peacefully  would  never  know  them,  but  that 
child  had  been  with  him  while  she  was  sent  away. 
Trix  knew,  as  far  as  a  child  could,  all  those  precious 
details  that  Kate  could  only  hear  through  her,  handed 
on  by  their  possessor, — the  last  days,  the  last  hours. 
Trix  would  want  to  tell  her  all  about  them.  And 
that  Kate  could  not  endure.  No  one  can  bear  more 
than  is  bearable.  Two  things  she  could  not  bear — 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  cure,  or  to  hear  Trix 
speak  of  what  she  had  seen  and  heard.  That  would 
be  the  breaking-point. 

Trix,  opening  her  eyes,  started.  The  white,  wan 
face  with  the  agony,  without  the  peace,  of  a  Mater 
Dolor osa  was  looking  down  on  her. 

"  Oh,  mother ! "  she  said ;  and  putting  her  hands  over 
her  face  she  began  to  cry. 

That  was  best,  and  Kate,  moving  quickly  to  the 


i88  Horace    BlaKe 

head  of  the  bed  and  leaning  forward,  put  her  arms 
round  her. 

"Trix  dear,  dear  child,  it  is  all  over." 

"Why  didn't  they  know  sooner?"  cried  Trix. 
"Why  did  n't  Roberts  get  more  frightened?  It  is  so 
awful  that  you  did  not  know. " 

Kate  could  not  speak,  but  her  touch  became  still 
more  tender  and  caressing. 

Trix's  heart  had  guided  her  right  so  far.  But  how 
could  there  be  a  real  fusion  between  the  young  nature 
— elastic,  romantic  in  its  grief — and  the  infinite  re- 
gions of  pain,  of  want,  in  the  soul  of  the  woman  that 
was  stretched  on  the  rack  of  relentless  nature  without 
comfort  and  without  hope?  It  was  inevitable  that 
Trix  should  add  her  shafts  that  would  quiver  in 
Kate's  mind.  She  prattled  through  her  tears  to  the 
woman  who  seemed  petrified,  of  the  last  evening;  of 
how  he  had  talked  of  his  childhood,  of  his  sister, 
nothing  in  that  about  Kate  herself.  And  yet  when 
Trix  spoke  of  how  anxious  he  had  been  that  Kate's 
room  should  look  pretty,  she  felt  it  physically  unbear- 
able. She  could  bear  to  hear  neither  of  the  silence 
as  to  herself,  nor  of  his  thought  for  her,  from 
Trix. 

She  took  her  arms  from  round  her  and  stood 
motionless,  looking  out  of  the  window.  The  silence 
gradually  made  itself  felt  as  a  chill  to  the  crying  girl. 
Kate's  face  was  stony. 

"You  had  better  have  some  food  up  her,  dear," 
she  said  very  gently,  interrupting  a  fresh  sentence. 
Trix  felt  it  strange  not  to  be  able  to  go  on  with  what 
she  was  saying. 

"I  don't  think  I  want  anything.  Have  you  had 
anything,  mother?" 


Horace    BlaKe  189 

"Yes, "  said  Kate  firmly,  not  knowing  that  she  had, 
in  fact,  eaten  nothing  since  she  left  Paris. 

A  knock  at  the  door.  Roberts  had  brought  a  tele- 
gram to  Mrs.  Blake. 

"Find  Abbey  tomb  out  of  the  question.  Writing. 
Deepest  sympathy — TEMPEST." 

If  she  could  have  felt  any  external  fact  still  to  be  the 
subject  of  great  regret,  great  disappointment,  it  was 
this.  She  was  in  the  doorway  as  she  read  the  telegram 
and  going  into  the  passage  she  shut  the  door  behind 
her. 

Horace  to  her  now  would  live  in  his  fame,  in  his 
works,  in  the  admiration,  the  gratitude  of  his  fellow 
men.  To  increase,  to  perpetuate  this  posthumous 
fame  was,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  defeat  death. 

This  first  blow,  this  gross  bit  of  ingratitude  and 
officialdom,  only  set  the  passion  of  her  nature  more 
hotly  on  her  task. 

"The  funeral  will  be  here,"  she  said  to  Roberts  in 
a  businesslike  tone.  "  Is  the  doctor  coming  in  again 
soon?" 

"He  said  he  would  be  here  at  half-past  two." 

"Meanwhile  I  will  go  to  the  cemetery;  you  had 
better  show  me  the  way.  And  say  that  some  soup 
and  wine  must  be  sent  up  at  once  for  Miss  Trix. 

There  were  so  many  graves  with  crosses,  on  which 
were  hung  for  the  most  part  curiously  ugly  wreaths 
of  immortelles  and  bead  crowns  and  common  pictures 
in  bead  frames. 

Kate  felt  frantic  as  she  stood  in  the  midst  of  these. 
Even  the  great  outlook  on  the  sea  and  the  strange 


190  Horace    BlaKe 

miniature  archipelago  of  many-coloured  rocks  glorious 
in  the  sunshine  could  not  compensate  for  the  tawdry, 
confused,  unlovely  things  at  her  feet. 

"There  is  a  piece  of  ground  farther  to  the  right," 
said  Roberts,  "where  there  are  no  graves  yet.  M.  le 
Cure"  mentioned  it  to  me  this  morning. " 

And  therefore  Horace's  grave  is  on  a  rising  hillock 
to  the  right  as  you  go  into  the  cemetery  and  a  costly 
piece  of  ground  round  it  was  secured  by  purchase. 
Standing  by  it  there  seems  to  be  nothing  nearer  than 
the  sea  and  the  sky. 


PART  II 


191 


I 

TOO    SOON 

OTEPHEN  received  a  short  letter  from  Trix  posted 

0  on  the  eve  of  her  father's  death.     He  did  not 
know  then  that  the  end  had  already  come. 

"The  day  is  at  last  fixed,"  she  wrote,  "and  the 
great  doctor  will  be  here  the  day  after  to-morrow.  I 
hope  and  trust  that  we  were  right,  but  I  am  afraid  that 
father  is  dreading  the  visit.  I  wish  you  could  have 
come  back,  you  might  have  helped  him;  you  always 
did  him  good. 

"  It  is  very  kind  of  you  to  want  to  know  about  me. 
You  guessed  right;  I  am  not  sleeping  very  well.  I 
try  not  to  seem  too  anxious  for  his  sake,  but  I  cannot 
help  it.  He  wants  me  to  be  out  by  the  sea,  but  I  don't 
like  being  alone  on  the  beach  as  I  did  when  I  first  came 
here.  I  have  not  seen  the  sunset  from  the  sands  since 
the  last  evening  you  were  here. 

"  It  is  a  good  thing  that  mother  is  able  to  come  now. 

1  am  sure  he  needs  her.     I  wish  I  were  a  better  nurse. 
I  will  let  you  know  what  Dr.  Saumur  says  as  soon 
as  I  am  told. " 

The  note  of  failure  and  discouragement  distressed 
Stephen.  He  thought  of  the  dark  lines  that  must  be 
visible  round  those  brown  eyes,  with  their  blue  depths. 
Even  her  mother  had  not  seemed  to  think  enough  of 
what  the  child  must  be  going  through.  But  then,  no 
doubt,  during  his  talks  with  Mrs.  Blake,  she  had  been 

13  '93 


194  Horace   BlaKe 

absorbed  in  the  thought  of  her  husband.  Even  when 
Trix  had  betrayed  to  him  that  she  was  hurt  by  her 
mother's  want  of  sympathy,  Stephen  had  been  able 
to  see  Kate's  side  in  the  matter.  It  was  no  wonder  if, 
during  those  last  weeks,  she  had  thought  almost 
exclusively  of  the  husband  to  whom  she  had  evidently 
devoted  her  life.  He  could  not  believe  that  Mrs. 
Blake  was  wanting  in  the  deeper  motherly  feelings. 
This  had  been  an  abnormal,  critical  time — not  the 
ordinary  state  of  her  mind  and  feelings.  It  was  un- 
thinkable that  a  woman  of  her  type  should  be  jealous, 
and  unkind  to  her  own  child.  He  was  convinced  that 
she  was  simply  absolutely  preoccupied,  so  that  if 
there  had  been  a  want  of  feeling  for  Trix  it  had  been 
unknown  to  herself. 

He  was  still  holding  Trix's  letter  when  a  telegram 
from  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  was  brought  to  him. 

"Horace  died  peacefully  during  the  night.  Am 
obliged  to  make  arrangements  immediately.  Could 
you  let  me  know  if  Abbey  funeral  likely? 

"KATHERINE  BLAKE." 

His  first  thought  was  the  question  whether  Blake's 
wife  had  seen  him  before  the  end ;  his  first  feeling  was 
for  Trix's  sorrow.  Then  he  had  an  awe-struck  image 
in  his  mind  of  Horace's  face  with  those  wonderful  eyes 
shut.  Would  there  be  light  still  in  the  features?  He 
thought  there  must  be ;  he  could  not  conceive  Horace 
Blake's  face  without  that  strange,  luminous  quality. 
He  stood  holding  the  flimsy  paper  in  his  hand  for  some 
moments  before  he  grasped  the  purport  of  what  he 
was  asked  to  do,  and  then  a  strong  feeling  of  repug- 
nance slowly  rose  in  his  mind.  How  could  he  know, 


Horace  BlaKe  195 

how  could  he  find  out  at  once,  what  would  be  the 
official  or  the  public  feeling  as  to  Horace  Blake's 
funeral?  He  saw  that  she,  poor  woman,  had  really 
taken  it  for  granted.  But  the  haste  of  this  inquiry 
seemed  almost  indelicate — he  disliked  it.  He  had 
another  picture  in  his  mind  of  the  broken-hearted 
widow,  hardly  able  to  think  of  these  things  at  all ;  and 
then  of  a  wave  of  public  feeling  carrying  the  point  in 
spite  of  want  of  encouragement,  even  of  hostility,  on 
the  part  of  the  officials.  He  was  too  inexperienced  to 
know  how  rare  is  the  wave  of  public  feeling  that  has 
not  been  prepared  for  in  private.  Neither  could  he 
have  understood  the  terrible,  external  activity  of  some 
parts  of  a  woman's  nature  during  the  agony  that  men 
call  the  breaking  of  a  heart.  Where  is  the  "widow 
indeed"  who  sits  gently  crying  in  the  darkened  room, 
leaving  the  sordid  cares  to  others?  Who  has  known 
her?  And  who  has  not  known  the  "widow  indeed" 
who  makes  everything  as  difficult  as  possible  for 
everybody?  Or  the  one  who,  like  Kate,  does  the  too 
sensible,  too  practical,  too  matter-of-fact  thing  with 
one  part  of  her  faculties,  because  there  is  part  of  her 
that  is  dead,  and  there  can  be  no  balance  of  the  nature 
without  a  long  readjustment? 

Kate  was  quite  right,  in  fact,  to  make  this  inquiry 
about  the  Abbey  without  delay.  There  would  be 
endless  complications  as  to  a  temporary  grave  in  a 
foreign  land,  and  if  she  brought  the  body  home  now 
she  must  know  where  it  was  to  be  taken.  Stephen  did 
not  realise  this,  but  he  did  think  that  if  it  were  to  be 
done,  perhaps  she  was  right  to  choose  such  an  insig- 
nificant individual  as  himself,  who  was  not  even  a 
relation,  to  make  the  inquiry  privately.  He  had 
ceased  to  be  surprised  at  the  demands  made  on  his 


196  Horace    BlaKe 

friendship  by  the  Blake  family.  He  did  all  that 
could  conceivably  be  done  before  he  sent  the  negative 
answer.  He  was  not  entirely  surprised  at  the  absolute 
refusal  even  to  entertain  the  idea  on  the  part  of  the 
authorities  at  the  Abbey.  Before  so  very  long  he 
understood  plainly  enough  why  they  had  not  been 
ready  to  give  those  honours  to  the  famous  dead 
which  had  seemed  to  poor  Mrs.  Blake  so  obviously 
his  due. 

Tired  and  depressed,  Stephen  went  to  his  club  in 
the  evening,  and,  taking  up  an  early  edition  of  the 
evening  paper,  read  in  it  the  announcement  of  Horace 
Blake's  death.  What  he  saw  first  was  the  simple 
announcement  of  what  Roberts  had  telephoned  to 
Paris,  but  later  editions  had  received  and  written  up 
Kate's  own  telegrams.  The  point  they  threw  into 
relief  was  the  absence  of  suffering.  "He  passed  away 
peacefully,"  they  said,  "looking  at  the  stars  and  the 
sea. "  It  seemed  that  his  wife  had  been  there,  and  the 
great  specialist.  There  were  short  leaders  on  his 
career,  which  said  modestly  that  it  was  too  soon  to 
decide  what  would  be  Blake's  niche  in  the  temple  of 
fame,  but  undoubtedly  he  was  the  dramatist  who  had 
produced  the  most  marked  revolution  in  modern 
English  .drama.  Then,  to  avoid  the  difficulty  of 
saying  what  he  was,  they  fell  back  on  saying  what  he 
was  not,  and  explained  that  he  was  not  really  at  all 
like  half  a  dozen  other  dramatists.  There  was  very 
little  biography,  but  one  journalist  said  that  he  had 
been  educated  in  a  Roman  Catholic  seminary. 

By  the  following  morning  everything  had  swelled  to 
enormous  dimensions.  Two  illustrated  papers  had 
pictures  of  Blake  supported  by  his  wife,  gazing,  with 
a  look  of  immense  enjoyment  on  his  face,  at  a  sky  with 


Horace    BlaRe  197 

stars  as  big  as  tea-trays,  and  a  scenic  distance  of 
illuminated  sea. 

There  were  several  longer  articles  on  the  dead  man's 
work.  The  more  thoughtful  writers  evidently  felt 
very  strongly  that  Blake  had  never  given  out  his  whole 
mind  to  the  world.  Was  his  genius,  asked  one,  simply 
calculated  to  focus  the  evils  of  a  decadent  civilisation, 
and  of  moribund  religious  ideas?  to  make  men  face 
the  things  that  were  concealed  from  their  eyes  by 
conventionality  masking  as  decency?  all  the  huge 
self-deception  of  men  in  their  treatment  of  women, 
all  the  greed  and  self-love  that  made  women  accept 
their  position,  all  the  nonsense  of  education  and  the 
tyranny  of  the  Churches?  He  had  thrown  the  lowest 
side  of  everything  to  the  top,  revealing  the  basest 
forms  of  vitality,  and  insisting  that  men  should  blind- 
fold their  eyes  no  longer.  But  it  could  hardly  be 
asserted  that  that  was  all,  because  that  would  be  to 
ignore  the  great  creations  of  men  and  women,  charac- 
ters just  true  and  holy,  which  surely  had  been  the  very 
soul  of  his  greater  dramas.  But  whether  he  put 
prophecies  or  blasphemies  into  the  mouth  of  a  cleric, 
showed  truth  or  self-advertisement  to  be  the  unique 
object  of  an  inspired  poet,  made  a  woman  ready  to  die 
for  love,  or  coldly  analyse  it  into  the  mask  of  greed,  a 
man  give  his  whole  life  as  a  protest  against  sin,  or 
callously  defend  a  traffic  in  vice,  he  never  showed  what 
he  himself  felt,  or  thought,  or  judged  of  any  of 
these  things.  His  characters  bore  their  own  burden. 
Horace  Blake  was  an  enigma,  and  they  had  all  been 
waiting  for  further  development,  further  light,  when 
he  had  passed  out  of  their  reach.  One  critic  boldly 
advanced  a  view  that  there  had  been  nothing  further 
to  develop.  Enormous  as  was  the  loss  of  anything 


198  Horace   BlaKe 

Blake  might  have  written,  this  writer  did  not  believe 
that  there  would  be  any  other  revelation  of  his  deepest 
conviction  than  what  they  had  already.  The  dra- 
matic faculty,  he  wrote,  was  Blake's  to  an  uncommon 
degree,  but  such  a  gift  can  develop  itself  without 
developing  a  consistent  line  of  thought.  He  made 
us  see  what  he  saw,  and  what  we  should  never  have 
seen  for  ourselves;  but  it  would  have  been  useless  to 
ask  him  to  tell  us  what  he  thought  about  the  world  he 
showed  us.  Probably  the  very  gift  that  made  him 
absorbed  in  seeing,  and  the  passionate  revolt  against 
what  he  saw,  prevented  the  growth  of  a  calmer 
thought. 

Will  the  world  never  learn,  asked  this  writer,  that  the 
greatest  man  is  possessed  of  only  one  brain,  one  ner- 
vous system;  that  each  man  is  in  reality  a  specialist, 
limited  to  his  special  faculties,  and  that  no  one  can  see 
at  the  back  of  his  own  head? 

Two  or  three  others  simply  hinted  that  Horace  had 
been  forced  to  wear  a  mask ;  he  was  the  victim  of  the 
censor.  They  had  a  knowing  air  about  this,  as  if  they 
could,  if  they  would,  have  told  their  readers  exactly 
what  it  was  that  Horace  had  never  been  allowed  to 
say.  Others  again  pressed  for  further  information. 
They  said  that,  of  course,  there  must  be  much  left 
behind  in  letters,  in  perhaps  half -finished  work,  in  the 
knowledge  of  his  friends,  that  would  give  the  unknown 
side  of  Blake  to  the  world;  for  this  they  would  wait 
rather  than  form  a  premature  judgment.  Before  long 
the  other  side  of  the  great  dramatist,  the  personal 
opinions,  the  unknown  quality  in  his  mind  would  fill  in 
the  blanks  and  complete  the  circle. 

Stephen  read  all  the  literary  criticism  with  the 
keenest  interest.  He  felt  as  if  he  already  possessed 


Horace    BlaKe  199 

light  on  the  unknown  places ;  it  was  impossible  not  to 
feel  that  his  knowledge  of  the  soul  he  had  met  with 
at  that  last  station  of  life  must  interpret  to  him  his 
whole  work.  But  the  personal  side  of  the  things 
written  about  Blake  disgusted  him  as  sheer  repulsive 
journalism. 

While  reading  what  the  public  knows  of  its  favour- 
ites, we  are  often  inclined  to  a  cheap  irony.  We 
know  that  every  wife  or  daughter  who,  we  are  told,  was 
with  the  dying  man  to  the  last,  had  not  necessarily 
the  adoring  love  that  is  imputed  to  them.  We  sus- 
pect these  journalistic  domestic  dramas.  Stephen 
knew  something  about  this  one  and  its  peculiar 
tragedy.  He  had  been  with  Trix  and  had  known  what 
those  last  weeks  together  had  been  to  father  and 
daughter.  There  was,  indeed,  the  mystery  and  awful 
sadness  of  the  relations  between  husband  and  wife; 
but  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  romance  of  father  and 
daughter  was  still  more  present  to  him,  and  through 
it  he  saw  Horace  glorified.  He  felt  even  the  para- 
graphs about  the  sky  that  Horace  had  gazed  at,  or  the 
"simple  village  folk"  among  whom  he  had  spent  the 
last  weeks,  or  the  "simple  room "  in  which  he  had  died, 
with  its  "simple  furniture"  and  its  glorious  outlook, 
to  be  repulsive.  But  when  one  paper  alluded  to  the 
daughter  who  had  read  Scott — "  always  his  favourite 
reading  from  a  child" — aloud  to  him  up  to  the  last 
moment,  Stephen  squirmed. 

What  he  felt  to  be  repulsive  was  the  mannerism 
of  the  whole  thing;  the  new  conventionality  of  the 
treatment  of  the  great  facts  of  death  and  loss.  Were 
the  harping  on  simplicity  and  the  incessant  allusions  to 
nature  and  the  "peaceful  passing  away,"  and  all  the 
implied  adulation,  in  the  least  more  real  than  the 


2OO  Horace   BlaKe 

most  pompous  phraseology  of  the  eighteenth  century 
inscriptions  on  tombstones? 

The  depth  of  the  unreality  lay  in  the  truth  that 
whatever  Horace  had  said,  or  done,  or  committed,  or 
suffered ;  whatever  the  men  who  wrote  the  paragraphs 
really  thought  of  him,  they  would  have  written  just 
those  same  things  with  the  same  force  of  an  affectation 
of  realism,  and  of  a  contempt  for  grandeur  or  preten- 
sion. That  is  a  marked  thing  in  our  modern  manners, 
the  extraordinary  divorce  between  the  world's  talk 
in  print  and  the  talk  of  men  from  mouth  to  mouth. 

There  was  much  talk  in  newspaper  offices  about 
Horace  Blake  during  the  first  nights  after  his  death, 
and  facts — real  and  supposed — were  discussed  by  the 
men  who  were  writing  about  him,  that  were  unknown 
to  his  nearest  friends  and  relations.  But  there  was  no 
fear  of  this  knowledge  in  the  least  affecting  the  articles 
that  were  written. 

"The  last  time  I  saw  Horace  Blake, "  was  a  charm- 
ing account  of  a  talk  with  the  author  of  False  Measures 
about  the  general  state  of  the  drama,  by  a  man  who 
whispered  that  his  wife  had  declared  last  winter  that 
never  again  would  she  agree  to  meet  Blake  at  a  supper- 
party:  "his  talk  was  the  limit." 

"The  great  dramatist  at  home,"  gave  a  delightful 
picture  of  life  at  the  Blakes'  cottage  by  a  man  who  had 
never  been  there,  and  who  believed  that  very  few  mar- 
riages (and  he  was  no  optimist  as  to  marriage)  were  as 
miserable  as  that  of  the  Horace  Blakes. 

"Blake  as  I  knew  him, "  was  written  by  a  man  who 
had  once  travelled  with  him  for  an  hour  or  so. 

"What  Frenchmen  thought  of  Blake,"  supposed 
that  a  group  of  litterateurs  had  hung  about  him  during 
his  stay  on  the  coast  of  Brittany.  There  was  one 


Horace    BlaKe  201 

short  article  on  his  views  of  education  and  the  way  in 
which  he  had  brought  up  his  daughter.  There  was 
one  on  his  supposed  love  of  dogs,  which  also  enumer- 
ated his  favourite  flowers.  If  there  could  have  been 
printed  in  parallel  columns  what  the  writers  thought 
they  knew  of  Blake  with  what  they  wrote  of  him, 
what  a  remarkably  interesting  study  it  would  have 
been!  Nobody  would  have  been  more  astonished 
than  Stephen,  had  he  had  such  a  revelation  as  to  Hor- 
ace, and  what  some  of  the  underworld  of  literature 
thought  about  him.  Stephen  was  not  a  gossip,  or  he 
might  at  this  time  have  acquired  knowledge  that 
would  have  saved  him  much  future  trouble.  But  he 
was  not  in  touch  with  Horace's  intimates,  and  the  few 
he  knew  slightly,  finding  that  he  was  a  personal  friend 
of  Blake's  widow,  were  discreet. 

As  it  was,  the  papers  were  doing  just  what  Kate  and 
Roberts  wanted  from  their  different  points  of  view. 
Roberts  admired  it  all  immensely.  Kate  knew  its 
utility ;  it  was  the  necessary  support  of  popular  fame, 
and  if  there  were  silly  notes  in  the  volume  of  sound, 
even  they  swelled  the  total  amount. 

Presently  it  was  announced  in  the  papers  that  Blake 
had  wished  to  be  buried  in  Brittany,  and  soon  the 
quiet  spot  he  had  chosen  on  the  hillside,  whence  the 
murmur  of  the  waves  was  heard  day  and  night,  had 
been  described  in  a  dozen  papers. 

"How  about  the  shadow  of  a  cypress?"  said  one 
journalist  to  another.  "Safe,  eh?" 

"There  's  a  cypress  somewhere  about,  you  bet." 

Stephen  himself  had  refused  to  write  an  appreciation 
for  any  paper  or  magazine. 

"Too  soon,"  he  wrote  in  answer  to  the  editors 
who  asked  him  to  do  so.  He  could  not  yet  intrude 


2O2  Horace    BlaKe 

upon  the  Blake  with  whom  he  had  watched  the  sunset 
on  that  western  coast,  the  Blake  who  had  said  that  he 
had  not  expected  to  find  a  friend  at  the  last  station  of 
the  journey. 


II 

A    REAL    BOOK 

THREE  weeks  after  Blake's  death  Stephen  got  a 
note  from  Mrs.  Blake,  asking  him  to  come  and 
see  her.  It  was  written  from  a  house  in  Wimbledon, 
lent  her  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  George  Shenstone.  Mrs. 
Shenstone,  it  seemed  (and  the  fact  surprised  Stephen, 
who  had  a  slight  acquaintance  with  these  rich  city 
folk),  was  an  old  friend  of  Kate's,  and  she  had  now  put 
her  house  and  her  servants  at  the  widow's  disposal. 
The  fact  was  that  the  public  excitement  over  Blake's 
death  had  roused  a  rather  dormant  friendship  to 
enthusiasm.  It  was  not  a  kindness  thrown  away; 
the  villa  stood  in  a  large  retired  garden,  the  rooms  were 
delightful,  the  servants  admirable.  Kate  was  more 
indifferent  to  comfort  than  is  usual  with  women  of 
her  age ;  but  she  was  not  indifferent  to  having  petty 
worries  and  cares  taken  off  her  hands.  The  space,  too, 
was  a  comfort ;  she  was  able  to  be  a  little  more  alone 
than  would  have  been  possible  in  a  small  house. 

Stephen,  on  arriving,  was  shown  at  once  into  a 
heavily  furnished  library.  Mrs.  Blake  was  sitting  at 
a  big  table  covered  with  papers.  Stephen  hardly 
realised  the  surroundings ;  he  only  knew  that  he  had  to 
greet  her  and  to  meet  her  sad,  direct  gaze.  She  rose 
tall  above  the  table,  and  leaning  a  little  across  it, 
held  out  a  hand  which  gave  the  firm  grasp  that  he 
always  liked  from  her.  The  intimacy  was  very  real, 
although  of  such  recent  growth.  He  had  come  in 

203 


2O4  Horace    BlaKe 

embarrassed  with  the  thought  of  the  telegram,  the 
failure  of  his  mission.  It  would  be  a  difficult  enough 
visit  anyhow,  but  that  failure  made  it  worse.  But 
when  he  saw  her  he  forgot  that  discordant  note. 
There  was  something  great  and  calm  in  her  sorrow. 
When  he  had  seen  her  before  she  had  been  in  a  strange 
trouble,  she  had  been  kept  away  from  the  dying 
man — that  was  unnatural.  This  widowhood,  with 
its  anguish,  was  comparatively  simple.  Indeed,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  it  was  exactly  the  condition  which 
brought  out  the  noblest  side  of  her ;  even  her  appear- 
ance had  gained  indefinitely.  There  was  unity  in  her 
nature  now,  and  if  the  oneness  of  feeling  was  pain, 
it  was  not  conflict.  Such  was  his  swift  impression. 
Then  he  tried  to  speak,  though  he  liked  the  silence 
far  better,  and  he  fell  from  lack  of  inspiration  into  the 
very  form  of  words  he  had  disliked. 

"There  was  no  suffering  at  the  end?"  he  said,  as  if 
he  were  laying  one  more  brick  on  the  piled-up  building 
of  assurances  to  that  effect. 

"The  end  was  most  peaceful, "  she  said,  "and  if  he 
had  lived  even  a  little  longer  it  might  have  been 
terrible." 

She  paused.  She  did  not  go  back  upon  the  fact 
that  the  suffering  had  been  terrible  in  the  last  weeks — 
terrible,  indeed,  two  days  before,  terrible  even  to  the 
last  twenty-four  hours. 

Stephen's  tongue  again  failed  him.  He  felt  as  if 
every  word  he  could  say  must  have  been  printed  a 
dozen  times  by  now. 

Her  answer  had  been  the  kindly  acceptance  and 
return  of  the  ordinary  phrases ;  her  look  made  it  deeper, 
gave  it  a  true  friendliness.  A  different  light  came 
into  her  face  for  a  moment. 


Horace    BlaKe  205 

"There  has  been  an  extraordinary  amount  of  public 
feeling,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  indeed, "  answered  Stephen  earnestly.  Could 
she  draw  any  satisfaction  from  that  newspaper 
commotion? 

"  It  has  been  very  touching, "  she  went  on,  a  certain 
suppressed  excitement  showing  itself.  She  moved 
restlessly  now;  her  stillness  was  troubled.  "There 
is  a  great  deal  to  be  done." 

A  sense  of  the  enormous  pathos  of  the  weakness 
left  in  all  her  strength  caught  at  his  throat.  It  was  as 
incongruous  as  if  a  prophetess  had  become  restless 
on  the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine  Chapel. 

Then  she  leaned  on  her  elbow,  and  for  a  moment 
pressed  her  beautiful  hand  on  her  forehead  as  if 
in  difficulty  for  a  remembrance  or  a  decision.  She 
raised  her  head  and  looked  at  him  with  a  slow  glance, 
almost  as  if  she  were  examining  him  under  some  new 
idea,  or  as  if  fresh  light  could  be  gained  by  merely 
looking  at  him. 

"  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  something  important, " 
she  said.  "Ah !  how  tiresome, "  for  a  sleek  and  kindly 
butler  now  came  in.  "It  is  the  lawyer.  Yes,  I 
must  see  him.  Are  you  in  a  hurry,  Mr.  Tempest? 
Could  you  possibly  wait  twenty  minutes  for  me?  I 
want  to  be  able  to  talk  quietly  with  you.  I  should 
not  be  more  than  twenty  minutes,  and  Trix  would 
like  to  see  you." 

"I  'm  in  no  sort  of  hurry,"  said  Stephen;  "let  me 
go  into  another  room." 

"Yes,  here,  into  the  drawing-room."  She  led  him 
across  the  big  library  lined  with  books  and  opened  a 
door. 

The  next  room  had  red  blinds  drawn  down ;  it  was 


206  Horace    BlaKe 

all  pink  and  warm  and  full  of  flowers,  not  oppressively 
hot.  Stephen  in  a  moment  realised  that  Trix  was 
lying  back  in  a  deep  armchair  in  a  corner  by  a  screen. 
She  looked  very  thin  and  pale  in  her  black  garments, 
and  her  white  forehead  and  her  large  eyes  shone  like 
light  out  of  the  blackness. 

"At  last,"  she  said  quickly,  "at  last." 

Her  tone  was  touching,  almost  piteous.  They 
moved  together  to  a  sofa  near  the  window,  and  sat 
down. 

" It  was  all  no  use,  our  plan  about  the  great  doctor; 
it  only  made  him  unhappy,  that  is  what  I  cannot  bear 
now.  He  dreaded  it  so ;  he  was  never  so  bright  after 
it  was  suggested  to  him  until  the  last  day,  the  last 
evening." 

"We  did  our  best,"  said  Stephen  simply,  "and 
I  don't  think  it  can  have  made  any  real  difference. 
Probably  it  was  because  his  illness  was  advancing 
more  rapidly  that  he  seemed  like  that.  And  the  last 
evening ?" 

"Yes,  the  last  evening,"  said  Trix  eagerly,  "we 
were  so  happy.  I  read  aloud  to  him  and  then  he 
talked  of  when  he  was  a  child.  He  told  me  every- 
thing, all  the  tricks  he  and  his  sister  played  on  their 
nurse,  and  all  the  little  silly  things,  and  how  they  kept 
their  birthdays  and  about — about  the  day  he  made  his 
First  Communion . ' ' 

She  was  silent. 

Stephen  said  nothing  for  a  moment. 

"I  am  thankful  you  had  that." 

"It  is  precious,  is  n't  it?"  said  Trix,  and  big  tears 
welled  out  of  her  eyes.  "But  I  would  not  tell  any- 
body but  you.  I  have  told  nobody  anything  about 
it  all,  except  the  cure  and  the  old  sacristan,  who  was 


Horace    BlaKe  207 

only  a  joke  when  you  were  there,  but  they  were  so 
kind  to  me.  You  see,  a  great  deal  of  it  was  dreadful. 
Poor  mother  could  not  bear  the  old  cure  having  been 
so  much  with  father,  and  she  would  do  everything 
through  Roberts,  and  it  became  so  strange  and  rude. 
I  think  he  knew  how  much  I  minded  it,  but  if  she 
had  sent  orders  by  the  servants  he  would  have  taken 
them,  he  was  so  devoted  to  father.  She  was  very 
strange — very  kind  to  me,  very  anxious  to  take  care 
of  me,  but  she  never  mentioned  father's  name,  never 
wanted  to  know  anything  from  me,  only  from  Roberts. 
I  was  simply  in  the  way,  and  she  did  not  think  it  good 
for  me  to  be  in  the  room  where  father  was  laid,  so  I 
used  to  go  and  sit  and  cry  by  the  sea,  but  the  vicaire 
found  me  one  day,  and  the  cure  another,  and  I  went 
to  church  as  much  as  I  could." 

"And— ?"  said  he. 

"It  isn't  nonsense,  that  religion,  after  all,  Mr. 
Tempest.  I  knew  it  as  soon  as  my  father  was  dead, 
but — but — I  went  to  ask  the  cure  to  let  me  be  a 
Catholic  too,  and  he  would  n't  let  me." 

"Good  old  man,"  said  Stephen  gently. 

"I  must  wait, "  said  Trix.  " I  don't  know  why.  I 
am  eighteen.  I  have  seen  so  much  for  my  age.  I 
have  been  through  so  much,  I  ought  to  be  able  to 
judge  for  myself.  The  funeral  was  beautiful.  Mother 
and  Aunt  Anne  did  n't  understand  it,  but  the  vicaire 
explained  it  all  to  me  the  day  before.  Have  you  ever 
heard  the  Benedictus  sung  by  an  open  grave?" 

"Never." 

The  girl's  eyes  had  a  far-off  look  in  them.  Then, 
coming  back  to  facts: 

"Do  you  know  that  M.  le  Cure"  has  cancer,  and  he 
had  put  off  his  operation  to  attend  to  father?  It  is 


208  Horace  BlaKe 

to  be  done  on  Monday  and  the  vicaire  will  send  me  a 
telegram.  He  will  have  heaps  of  prayers.  I  will 
let  you  know  when  I  hear.  They  were  good  to  me, " 
she  went  on,  "and  they  did  n't  only  care  about  the 
papers  and  the  fuss  and  father's  fame;  they  liked  to 
talk  about  how  patient  he  had  been  and  how  he  had 
loved  me  and  how  he  had  prayed.  He  died  like  a 
saint,  the  little  nun  said.  I  hardly  know  myself  what 
happened  when  he  died.  I  was  so  dazed." 

"Poor  child!"  said  Stephen  gently.  "I  wonder 
you  were  not  ill  afterwards." 

"No,  I  was  quite  well,  only  tired,  but " 

The  door  opened  and  there  was  Mrs.  Blake.  They 
were  both  so  very  sorry  to  be  disturbed  that  she  could 
not  but  see  it. 

"We  will  come  back  soon,  Trix."  There  was  a 
tone  in  her  voice  Tempest  had  not  heard  before,  rich 
and  kind  he  thought,  but  sad  and  a  little  aloof. 

They  were  soon  back  in  the  library,  sitting  in  two 
leather  chairs  near  the  empty  fireplace.  Her  hands 
lay  white  and  still  on  her  black  dress.  Perhaps  his 
sympathy  was  less  quickened  for  her  now ;  his  thoughts 
were  still  with  Trix  in  the  other  room. 

"I  wonder  if  you  will  be  surprised  at  what  I  am 
going  to  say?"  she  began.  "I  want  to  ask  you  to 
write  the  Life  of  my  husband.  I  cannot  do  it  myself 
for  many  reasons,  and  there  is  no  one  I  should  like 
to  do  the  work  as  much  as  you." 

Hardly  anything  could  have  astonished  Stephen  so 
utterly.  He  sank  back  in  the  chair  as  if  he  had  been 
thrust  down  by  a  strong  hand. 

"Good  God!"  he  said.     "I  am  indeed  amazed." 

Kate  gave  him  a  moment  to  recover  himself,  and 
in  that  moment  he  saw  her  position  in  a  flash.  She 


Horace    BlaKe  209 

wanted  to  have  the  book  written  at  once,  before  this 
fickle,  busy  world  had  turned  to  other  things.  It 
was  her  idea  of  his  real  monument.  He  remembered 
how  she  had  advocated  extreme  truthfulness.  Would 
she  hold  to  that  now?  He  did  not  think,  as  some  men 
might  have  done,  that  there  would  not  be  much  story 
to  tell.  The  story  of  a  mind's  action  seemed  to  him 
quite  as  worth  telling  as  the  story  of  any  other  life 
of  action.  It  would  fascinate  him  to  discover  the 
genesis  and  development  of  Blake's  dramatic  genius. 
And  then  Horace  was  father  to  the  child  sitting  crying 
a  little  in  the  next  room. 

"You  would — "  He  blushed.  "You  would  wish 
for  a  real  book,  you  would  wish  it  to  be  quite  true?" 
he  said. 

"A  real  book, "  she  answered  firmly. 

"I  will  do  it,  Mrs.  Blake,  although  I  'm  not  a  bit 
fit  to  do  it;  but  that  is  your  responsibility.  It  is 
very  good  of  you  to  trust  me.  It  is  an  immense 
thing  for  me." 

Then  Anne  Coniston  came  into  the  room  and  found 
a  pleasant-faced  young  man  with  a  good  brow  and 
dark  eyes,  sitting  opposite  to  her  sister. 

"Mr.  Tempest  will  write  the  biography,  Anne." 

"Yes,"  said  Stephen,  rising.     "I  will  do  my  best." 

A  face  that  was  a  very  mild  edition  of  Kate's  face 
was  turned  towards  him  but  he  did  not  notice  her. 
14 


Ill 

DON'T 

THAT  night  Stephen  went  to  the  theatre  to  see  a 
play  of  Blake's  that  had  just  been  revived, 
and  which  he  had  not  seen  before.  It  was  called 
Puritan  Anne. 

He  came  away  feeling  the  necessity  of  a  talk  with 
somebody,  and,  after  a  moment's  reflection,  realised 
that  the  man  he  wanted  to  talk  with  was  Edward 
Hales,  an  old  friend  whom  he  had  not  seen  for  months. 
He  directed  a  taxi  to  take  him  to  St.  George's  Square. 

Hales  had  been  a  don  at  Oxford,  who,  on  inheriting 
a  very  small  fortune,  had  come  to  London,  where  he 
could  bury  himself  much  more  completely  than  in 
the  University.  He  wanted  above  all  not  to  be  inter- 
fered with,  but  he  also  wanted  to  see  life;  and  no  gift 
of  the  gods  or  fairies  would  have  pleased  him  better 
than  an  invisible  cloak.  He  had  let  Stephen  into  the 
house  himself,  grumbling  at  the  lateness  of  the  hour. 

"As  if  you  ever  went  to  bed,"  laughed  Stephen. 
When  he  had  resumed  his  pipe  Hales  leant  back  in  a 
chair  covered  in  worn  leather  and  grunted  once  or 
twice.  He  was  a  tall  man  with  a  rugged  face  and  red 
hair,  with  dark  brown  eyes  that  looked  fagged  but 
ready  to  be  kindly  or  amused. 

Stephen  was  sitting  on  the  arm  of  a  chair  near  him, 
smoking  a  cigarette,  and  absolutely  at  home. 

"I  have  agreed  to  write  Horace  Blake's  Life,"  he 
said. 

210 


Horace    BlaKe  211 

"You — you  whipper-snapper!"  exclaimed  Hales, 
not  a  little  astonished. 

"You  can't  be  more  amazed  than  I  am,"  said 
Stephen. 

"Well,"  said  Hales,  "because  you  wrote  quite  a 
thoroughly  good  life  of  a  statesman,  you  are  to  have 
the  dishing-up  of  Horace  Blake.  Why  does  n't  the 
woman  do  it  herself?"  He  gave  three  grunts,  of 
which  the  first  was  the  loudest  and  the  third  sounded 
like  a  big  dog  consenting  to  become  quiet.  Stephen 
did  not  answer. 

"She  won't,"  he  said  presently. 

Hales  looked  intensely  interested. 

"It  would  be  difficult  for  her,  I  admit." 

"I  have  just  been  to  see  Puritan  Anne,"  said 
Stephen. 

"Curious  you  should  mention  that;  I  was  thinking 
of  it  at  the  same  moment.  I  wrote  a  play  that  failed 
just  when  Puritan  Anne  came  out,  and  I  knew  some- 
thing of  the  B lakes  then.  Nancy  Potter  acted  it 
first,  and  she  died  that  year.  It  was  n't  acted  again 
for  years.  Blake  would  n't  allow  it,  I  believe.  It 
was  a  grisly  thing." 

"It's  wonderful,"  said  Stephen,  gazing  into  the 
coals.  "I  can  see  nothing  at  this  moment  but  that 
extraordinary  scene  when  the  man  explains  to  Anne 
that  he  had  never  loved  her,  and  she  answers  that 
she  had  never  loved  him — and  yet " 

"I  wouldn't  have  passed  it  had  I  been  censor," 
said  Hales. 

Stephen  stared  at  him. 

"You!"  he  exclaimed  in  astonishment. 

"It 's  to  me  a  thing  entirely  on  the  side  of  evil." 

"Evil!"   cried   Stephen.     "I   think   I   never   saw 


212  Horace    BlaKe 

anything  that  so  brought  home  to  me  the  horror  of 
the  loss  of  innocence.  Again,  in  the  next  scene,  how 
you  feel  what  might  have  been  in  her  'good-bye'  to 
the  young  minister." 

"I  think  that 's  the  most  devilish  bit  of  all,"  said 
Hales  irritably.  "It's  a  mockery  of  Christian 
repentance — the  whole  gist  of  that  scene  is  to  me 
abominable.  It  hints  that  the  young  minister  him- 
self had  had  no  higher  feelings  for  her  than  the  seducer, 
that  he  is  acting  a  part,  is  actually  posing,  showing 
himself  off  to  the  other  characters." 

"No,  no,"  said  Stephen.  "He  and  Anne  herself 
are  to  me  the  most  exquisite  figures.  I  can  hear 
Horace  Blake's  voice  in  that  young  minister's 
part.  I  know  Blake  wrote  queer  things,  and  said 
queerer;  but  he  had  something  curiously  spiritual 
in  him." 

"There  are  divers  kinds  of  spirits,"  said  Hales. 
"I  can't  say  you  show  the  discernment  thereof  that 
was  so  much  valued  in  the  early  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era." 

He  laughed  gruffly. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  don't  think  the 
young  minister  a  great  character?" 

"Dramatic  talent  is  an  odd  thing,"  said  Hales, 
"it  constantly  testifies  against  the  dramatist's  mean- 
ing. The  evil  of  Blake's  mind  is  over  it  all  to  me,  and 
therefore  I  would  have  been  the  dourest  censor  of 
them  all.  At  the  same  time  I  think  the  minister  is  a 
great  creation — his  creator  insinuated  things  about 
him  that  I  don't  believe.  Blake's  great  characters 
are  so  great  that  I  don't  listen  to  his  own  slandering 
of  them.  Sometimes  he  lets  them  have  full  play  like 
Martindale  in  this  last  drama  of  his — for  two  acts  or 


Horace    BlaKe  213 

more:  and  by  that  time  he  may  sneer  and  insinuate, 
but  it 's  too  late.  Martindale  is  to  me  the  type  of  the 
great  just  judge  in  modern  literature;  even  Balzac 
in  U  Interdiction  gave  us  nothing  greater.  And 
then  he  sneers  at  him,  belittles  him  as  hard  as  he  can 
in  the  two  last  scenes.  But  you  can't  conceive  what 
the  effect  of  Nancy  Potter  acting  Puritan  Anne  had 
upon  us  nearly  twenty  years  ago!  The  astounding 
pathos  and  reality  of  it.  And  yet  he  could  not  finish 
even  that  without  the  sneering,  evil  spirit  waking  up 
in  him.  'Love  you? — No:  I  wanted  just  as  a  study 
to  see  if  I  could  make  you  fall !  ' 

'"Love  you?'  she  replies;  'I  was  dazzled  by  you; 
I  loved  you  as  I  loved  the  world — to  content  all  my 
penned-up  ambitions ;  what  might  have  been  love  in  me 
would  have  been  for  the  minister.' 

"'I  don't  mind,'  he  answers.  'I'm  not  jealous. 
I  've  had  all  I  wanted  to  study.  I  understand  a 
woman's  mind  now,  as  I  never  hoped  to  understand 
it.' 

'"It  was  vivisection,'  she  says  in  effect,  'and  you 
have  given  me  no  anaesthetics.' 

"'But  I  can  make  you  well  again.  You  will  be 
great,  famous ' 

"'But  I — I  want  to  be  good.' 

"Who  could  ever  forget  Nancy  Potter  saying,  'But 
I — I  want  to  be  good?'  And  he  answers :  'Go,  to — 
go  to  God,  then.'" 

"After  that,  with  all  its  truth,  comes  the  scene  with 
the  minister  that  you  dare  to  admire,"  cried  Hales, 
standing  up  and  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece. 

"The  scene,  of  exquisite  repentance  and  hope  and 
comfort,  and  the  underlying  suggestion  that  the 
minister  is  an  ordinary  animal  posing  as  an  angel. 


214  Horace    BlaKe 

I  believe  there  were  fearful  rows  about  that  scene. 
Nancy  Potter  refused  twice  to  act  it.  But  she  was 
afraid  of  Blake,  they  all  were,  and  once  in  the  swing 
she  made  a  marvellous  thing  of  it.  She  seemed  to 
fling  back  the  insinuations  and  destroy  them  by  the 
glorious  simplicity  of  her  attitude.  Like  the  heroine's, 
it  was  her  last  utterance  in  public."  To  himself, 
and  quite  inaudibly,  he  muttered:  "Her  confiteor 
written  for  her  by  Horace  Blake." 

Hales  had  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  bookcase  opposite. 

"  I  have  all  his  plays  there, "  he  said.  "  I  have  just 
murdered  one  to  you.  I  have  no  verbal  memory,  but 
they  obsess  me  sometimes,  and  then  I  get  a  reaction. 
And  you — you  are  going  to  write  his  Life! " 

Stephen  felt  so  extremely  young  and  small. 

"And  what  advice  would  you  give  me?" 

"Don't." 

Stephen  looked  at  him  blankly. 

"But  I  have  told  Mrs.  Blake  I  will." 

Hales  moved  about  his  small  room  for  some  mo- 
ments without  speaking.  Then  he  sat  down  and 
crossed  his  legs. 

"Do,  then,"  he  said. 

It  seemed  to  Stephen  that  his  friend  was  taking  it 
all  very  lightly. 

"  I  thought  I  'd  like  to  talk  it  over  with  you." 

"No  good,"  said  Hales,  and  he  slowly  took  up  his 
pipe  and  stuffed  it  afresh.  "I  'm  sorry  to  say  it 's 
two  o'clock, "  he  went  on. 

Stephen  this  time  felt  almost  offended.  He  stood 
up ;  Hales  obviously  only  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him,  or 
why  refill  his  pipe  if  he  were  going  to  bed? 

"I  smoke  in  bed,"  Hales  observed.  "Stephen 
Tempest, "  he  went  on  in  a  tired,  uninterested  manner, 


Horace    BlaKe  215 

"it 's  Mrs.  Blake's  doing  to  give  you  this  job — just 
do  it  as  she  wishes,  work  entirely  with  her.  Don't 
heed  outside  talk — talk  is  never  to  be  trusted.  Follow 
on;  she  's  a  remarkable  woman,  you  can't  go  wrong 
with  her.  Yes,  good-night;  it  is  late." 

Stephen  went  out,  feeling  a  little  damped. 

For  some  time  Hales  stood  smoking  over  the  fire. 

"If  she  wants  Tempest  to  paint  her  devil  as  an 
angel  of  light,  let  him  do  it.  It  's  no  business  of  mine. 
But  what  will  she  tell  him  to  say  or  not  to  say  about 
Nancy  Potter?" 

Stephen  was  not  in  the  least  affected  by  what  he 
had  been  hearing.  Hales  was  unfair  to  Blake.  He 
did  not  understand  that  the  insinuations  he  spoke  of 
were  in  the  minds  of  the  meaner  characters  in  the 
play.  Hales  took  them  as  Blake's  own  meaning, 
which  was  ridiculous,  but  Stephen  had  not  felt  inclined 
to  fight  it  out. 

It  soon  became  known  that  Stephen  Tempest  was 
commissioned  to  write  Horace  Blake's  Life,  and  at 
once  people  began  to  talk  to  him  about  it.  A  group 
of  men  he  knew  were  discussing  the  fact  when  he  came 
into  his  club  one  evening. 

"Tempest,  is  it  true  that  Blake  left  a  play?" 

"I  've  not  got  the  papers  yet,  and  when  I  do  get 
them " 

He  paused,  and  the  man  took  the  hint 

"You  can  hardly  exaggerate  the  importance  of  it, " 
he  said.  "Blake  had  just  got  to  a  point  where  you 
could  see  that  much  more  was  coming." 

"There  's  a  story  that  his  mind  was  getting  soft," 
said  another. 

"Fiddlesticks ! "  said  Stephen. 


2i6  Horace    BlaKe 

"But  I  did  n't  know  that  you  knew  Blake  so  well, 
Tempest,"  said  a  writer  of  biography. 

"I  didn't  know  him  at  all  until  I  went  out  to 
Brittany  for  a  holiday." 

"How  did  you  like  him?" 

"Immensely — an  extraordinary  charm  about  him." 

"He  was  always  telling  interviewers  about  his 
people,"  said  the  author;  "but  he  gammoned  them. 
He  really  never  let  anyone  know  much  about  himself. 
Did  you  know  he  was  born  a  Catholic?" 

"Not  till  just  lately,"  said  Stephen. 

"His  mother  was  Irish, "  said  somebody  else. 

"She  wasn't,  she  was  Scotch — a  Highlander," 
corrected  the  author. 

"And  his  father  was  a  chemist  in  a  village  on  the 
Cornish  coast,"  chimed  in  an  older  man.  "I  saw 
him  once  in  Bristol.  A  scientific  sort  of  chemist,  but 
I  believe  there  was  a  shop.  He  married  above  him, 
but  he  was  a  refined  old  fellow  of  good  descent  and 
family,  and  might  have  done  anything,  but  he  was 
utterly  unpractical.  He  wrote  ballads." 

"Yes,  I  knew  about  the  father,"  said  the  author. 
"Blake  used  to  talk  to  interviewers  as  if  he  had  had 
a  father  of  great  force  of  character,  stern  and  narrow — 
he  used  to  say  that  Carlyle  had  set  the  fashion  in 
fathers,  and  that  it  gave  less  trouble  to  follow  the 
fashion  than  to  produce  another  father.  But  the 
chemist  was,  in  fact,  gentle  and  kindly  and  utterly 
vague.  He  died  when  his  son  was  a  boy,  and  they 
sent  Horace  to  a  seminary  and  tried  to  make  him  a 
priest.  You  '11  have  a  difficult  job,  Tempest,  but  an 
uncommonly  interesting  one,"  he  concluded. 


IV 

THIS    IS   MY    GREAT    CHANCE 

I  THINK  the  old  schoolroom  would  be  the  best," 
said  Stephen.  He  held  in  his  hands  some 
very  dirty  yellow  papers,  tied  in  red  tape. 

"  I  wish  you  would  spread  them  all  out  on  the  leads 
outside  the  window,  and  air  them  before  you  begin. 
Old  papers  are  very  dangerous.  I  knew  of  a  man  once 
who  died  of  examining  a  box  of  old  papers." 

"Mother,  you  have  had  the  most  varied  experience 
of  deaths!" 

"My  dear,  I  am  getting  on  for  sixty.  But  just  try 
how  they  smell." 

Stephen  raised  a  packet  of  letters  to  his  nose. 

"  Stuffy,  musty — nothing  worse." 

Mrs.  Tempest  went  on  knitting  rapidly. 

"I  shall  send  up  two  trays,  and  you  must  spread 
them  out  to  air  by  the  window." 

"Very  well,"  said  Stephen  smiling;  "and  I  may  do 
what  I  like  in  the  schoolroom,  and  no  one  will  dust  it 
or  go  into  it?" 

"No  one  shall  go  into  it  except  when  I  am 
there  myself  to  see  that  none  of  your  papers  are 
touched." 

That  was  the  limit  of  concession  to  which  he  could 
reach  at  present. 

The  schoolroom  had  a  fine  view  of  well-wooded 
country  from  the  windows.  It  had  been  refurnished 
for  his  sister's  benefit  before  she  married,  and  was 

217 


2i8  Horace    BlaKe 

comfortable,  cool  in  the  mornings,  and  gloriously 
distant  from  the  rest  of  the  house. 

In  it  Stephen  unpacked  the  two  first  tin  boxes  of 
letters  and  papers  that  Mrs.  Blake  had  sent  him. 
Before  leaving  London  he  had  given  up  his  rooms  and 
had  taken  a  flat  to  the  north  of  the  Park,  some  way 
off  from  anybody  he  knew ;  it  would  give  him  room  for 
any  amount  of  papers  and  undisturbed  quiet  to  work 
at  them.  His  mother  had  been  delighted  that  he 
should  first  come  to  work  at  home  for  a  few  weeks. 

"  Not  that  I  approve  of  Horace  Blake  for  a  moment," 
she  had  said,  "but  if  you  can't  take  a  holiday  this 
summer  you  might  as  well  do  your  work  here.  I 
never  would  see  or  read  one  of  his  plays ;  they  were  too 
wicked." 

"I  think  if  you  had  read  them — "  ventured 
Stephen. 

"  Nothing  would  induce  me  to, "  said  Mrs.  Tempest. 
"Why  should  I?" 

"To  be  able  to  judge  of  them,  you  know." 

"  Oh,  I  know  what  they  were  like  perfectly  well.  I 
don't  see  why  the  man's  Life  should  be  written  at  all." 

She  had  taken  what  seemed  to  Stephen  a  wholly 
unreasonable  view  of  Mrs.  Blake  as  a  tiresome,  rest- 
less woman  who  could  n't  let  her  husband  be  at  peace 
in  his  grave.  There  was  a  twinkle  in  Mrs.  Tempest's 
eyes  when  she  expressed  herself  freely,  but  all  the 
same  she  meant  what  she  said. 

Stephen,  piling  the  letters  in  the  schoolroom  cup- 
boards and  drawers,  did  feel  them  a  contrast  to  the 
school-books  and  copy-books  and  story-books  that 
once  filled  those  same  shelves.  There  was  hopeless 
confusion  in  the  papers ;  letters  of  different  years  in  a 
packet,  marked  with  the  same  date  in  Horace's 


Horace    BlaKe  219 

writing.  The  first  thing  would  be  to  try  to  make 
some  sort  of  order  in  them. 

"Washed  off  the  wicked  man's  dust?"  asked  his 
mother  as  he  came  in  very  late  for  luncheon. 

"He  was  n't  a  wicked  man, "  said  Stephen  from  the 
sideboard,  where  he  was  cutting  cold  ham.  "His 
conversation  was  not  always  pretty,  I  believe,  but 
by  the  time  I  knew  him  that  was  nearly  all  right." 

"Do  eat  slowly,"  said  Mrs.  Tempest.  "You  eat 
much  too  quickly;  the  Tempests  all  eat  too  quickly." 

"You  don't  understand,  mother,  what  a  chance 
this  is  for  me.  The  other  thing  I  wrote  was  for  a 
series  of  statesmen's  'Lives,'  and  it  did  uncommonly 
well,  but  this — 

"There  's  a  wasp  in  the  tart." 

" — this  is  my  great  chance.  Here  is  a  genius,  an 
astonishing  genius,  who  is  being  mourned  by  the  whole 
country." 

Mrs.  Tempest  snorted  a  little  to  mark  herself  an 
exception  to  this  universal  grief. 

"And  I  am  to  write  the  serious  and  official  bio- 
graphy." 

"Will  they  give  you  a  free  hand?" 

"The  arrangement  is  that  I  shall  do  what  I  like, 
with  everything  sent  to  me;  but  of  course  they  will 
only  send  me  what  they  want  me  to  use." 

"So  they  can  suppress  anything  a  little  difficult 
without  your  being  any  the  wiser?" 

"If  they  like,  certainly." 

Stephen  was  becoming  cross,  and  his  mother  knew 
it.  When  she  went  out  for  a  pottering  walk  in  the 
village  she  reflected  that  it  would  not  be  at  all  wise  to 
make  him  feel  that  she  was  going  to  nag  at  him  on  this 
biography  question.  She  was  a  woman  of  innumer- 


22O  Horace    BlaKe 

able  fears  for  those  she  loved.  If  Stephen  had  been 
thrown  across  any  other  family  as  he  had  been  thrown 
across  the  Blakes  she  might  have  been  unreasonably 
nervous,  but  there  was  some  excuse  for  her  to  be 
alarmed  at  his  devotion  to  the  dramatist's  widow,  as 
that  widow  had  a  daughter  who  had  nursed  the  dying 
man  on  a  romantic  foreign  coast. 

"  I  know  he  is  in  love  with  her, "  Mrs.  Tempest  told 
herself  angrily;  "and  there  is  no  marriage  I  should 
dislike  more." 

And  so  she  made  herself  miserable  while  Stephen 
was  dreaming  far  more  of  Horace  than  of  his  daughter. 
He  took  long  walks  in  which  he  debated  with  himself 
as  to  the  method  and  plan  of  his  work:  whether  to 
read  all  the  materials  and  get  them  into  thorough 
order  and  then  plan  out  the  proportion  to  be  given 
to  different  times  of  his  life,  or  just  to  make  a  study  of 
Blake's  youth  first  and  risk  having  to  curtail  it  if  it 
grew  too  large  for  the  rest  of  the  book.  He  settled 
on  the  latter  plan,  though  he  had  qualms  as  to  his 
own  wisdom  in  doing  it,  but  his  courage  failed  at  the 
enormous  task  of  studying  the  mass  of  material  that 
he  would  have  to  wade  through  before  he  put  pen  to 
paper.  One  would  be  dried  up  and  choked  before 
one  began,  he  told  himself.  So  he  now  put  on  one 
side  all  the  packets  of  letters  docketed  with  the  dates 
from  the  year  of  Horace's  birth  until  he  was  eighteen. 
First  came  letters  from  his  mother  to  her  sister  when 
he  was  a  child,  and  from  his  father  to  his  grandmother. 
There  were  others,  of  course,  but  those  were  the  most 
numerous  and  important.  Both  parents,  he  thought, 
had  been  cursed  with  too  much  imagination  and  in 
different  ways  with  great  fluency.  Horace's  mother 
was  the  more  vehement  in  speech,  and  when  things 


Horace    BlaKe  221 

went  wrong,  as  they  mostly  seemed  to  do,  she  wrote 
outpourings  to  her  sister.  Someone  had  generally 
done  very  wrong,  or  she  herself  had  been  an  absolute 
fool.  She  never  blamed  her  husband  for  the  constant 
breakdown  of  some  grand  plan  to  make  money. 
Evidently  she  got  a  great  deal  of  enjoyment  out  of 
life  all  the  same.  Stephen  seemed  to  see  her  after 
some  practical  failure  or  other,  when  some  forgotten 
bills  had  arrived  unexpectedly,  after  abusing  herself 
in  a  letter  to  her  sister,  turning  with  keen  zest  to 
little  everyday  joys.  She  adored  her  children,  not 
anxiously  as  did  Stephen's  own  mother,  but  with 
intense,  unclouded  joy.  Horace  looked  "more  like 
an  angel  than  ever, "  and  more  "amusing  when  he  was 
in  a  temper."  His  little  sister  had  just  backed  him 
up  in  revolt  against  some  rule,  and  they  seemed 
exquisitely  funny  to  the  admiring  parents.  They 
became  very  living  to  Stephen,  these  lovely  children 
with  shining  eyes,  who  went  through  outward  vicissi- 
tudes of  fortune  without  being  aware  of  anything 
but  happiness.  To  make  them  happy  had  been  the 
great  object,  and  it  had  been  attained.  Then,  evi- 
dently, there  was  cause  for  pride  in  the  children's 
precociousness.  Neither  Horace  nor  Mary  had  ever 
shown  any  inclination  for  scientific  tastes;  it  was  no 
use  to  try  and  make  them  collect  specimens  or  develop 
powers  of  observation  for  anything  but  human  nature 
and  scenery.  They  lived  from  the  first  in  a  dream- 
land of  their  own,  but  they  were  very  funny  as  mimics, 
and  they  wove  history  and  life  into  the  queer  drama 
of  their  imagination.  Their  father,  meanwhile,  was 
making  discoveries,  and  failing  to  secure  the  patents 
for  some  of  them,  or  failing  to  get  the  others  that 
were  patented  appreciated  by  the  public.  At  last 


222  Horace    BlaKe 

he  had  opened  an  actual  chemist's  shop,  and  his 
wife  wrote  vehemently  to  her  sister  of  the  humilia- 
tions he  was  undergoing,  and  at  the  same  time 
clearly  made  the  children  think  it  all  vastly  entertain- 
ing. Throughout,  the  elder  Blake  evidently  spent 
a  good  deal  of  time  in  admiring  his  wife  and  making 
the  children  happy.  It  seemed  to  Stephen  that 
storms  had  passed  quickly  in  that  household,  and 
that  there  was  something  of  warm  human  colouring 
in  it  all.  He  had  pictures  of  the  four — man,  woman, 
boy,  and  girl — in  long  expeditions  on  the  Cornish  coast, 
healthy,  loving,  graceful ;  there  was  no  taint  of  worldli- 
ness,  no  suspicion  of  vulgarity  in  the  Blakes.  They 
were  practising  Catholics,  and  evidently  in  their  few 
fat  years  subscribed  to  keeping  up  the  mission  as  well 
as  helping  the  poor. 

Stephen  fell  in  love  with  this  strange  blend 
of  the  refined,  cultivated  scientist,  with  the  chem- 
ist behind  the  counter,  at  evidently  irregular 
hours. 

Mr.  Blake  died  when  Horace  was  fifteen,  and  he 
was  mourned  with  intensity.  Then  Mrs.  Blake  and 
Mary  abandoned  themselves  to  pious  practices. 
At  this  time  there  began  to  be  allusions  to  a 
subject  hitherto  almost  ignored — the  subject  of 
education. 

"Why  he  should  go  to  school  when  he  knows  all 
they  can  teach  him  there,  I  don't  know,"  wrote  Mrs. 
Blake.  But  evidently  she  was  protesting  against 
pressure  to  which  she  ultimately  gave  in,  and  Horace 
was  sent  to  a  school  in  the  North  kept  by  some  reli- 
gious order.  There  was  a  photograph  of  Horace  taken 
at  that  date.  The  face  was  long,  the  eyes,  even  in  the 
commonplace,  faded  photograph,  held  Stephen,  who 


Horace  BlaKe  223 

had  looked  into  them  so  many  years  after.  The  hair 
wanted  cutting. 

"A  little  of  Shelley,  but  not  very  much  of  him," 
muttered  the  biographer.  "Blake  was  more  of  a 
human  being  than  Shelley." 

He  did  not  seem  to  have  been  self-conscious  then; 
that  came  soon  afterwards.  After  leaving  home  he 
was  miserable  exceedingly.  A  rough  attempt  at  a 
diary  which  began  at  school  was  now  Stephen's 
chief  help.  The  boys  could  not  understand  Horace; 
how  should  they?  It  was  far  too  late  to  transplant 
him  from  the  license  of  such  a  home  to  the  atmosphere 
of  discipline,  of  endless  small  rules  which  he  could 
hardly  have  managed  to  keep  if  he  had  tried  his 
best.  Then  the  lessons  were  to  him  quite  insufferably 
dull.  The  head-master  wrote  home  that  he  was 
clever  but  inaccurate,  careless,  no  good  at  his  work. 
Apparently  he  was  not  bullied;  he  went  his  own  way 
unless  he  was  roused,  when  his  temper  and  his  tongue 
made  those  who  had  disturbed  him  repent  pretty 
quickly.  He  never  complained  to  his  mother,  and  she 
was  evidently  determined  to  be  optimistic  as  to  his 
school-life.  It  seemed  as  if  in  the  terrible  grief  of  that 
year  she  could  not  face  any  other  trouble.  She  was 
giving  herself  to  the  habits  of  a  devote  without  perhaps 
any  vocation  to  be  one.  She  had  to  be  something 
intensely,  and  the  want  of  balance  had  never  been 
more  dangerous.  She  clearly  did  not  realise  that 
Horace,  hating  his  school-life,  had  begun  to  weary  of 
the  minute  and  incessant  practices  of  devotion  that 
came  into  the  day's  routine. 

He  came  home  at  Christmas,  determined  for  his 
mother's  sake  not  to  speak  out.  He  was  so  thankful 
to  be  back  that  he  was  happy  in  everything  and  was 


224  Horace    BlaKe 

hardly  oppressed  by  the  fact  that  religion  was  the  one 
topic  that  interested  his  mother.  But  in  the  summer 
holidays,  difficulties  began.  He  would  not  tell  her 
what  he  suffered  at  school,  as  he  knew  that  it  would  be 
unbearable  to  her,  but  he  became  irritable  and  morose. 
Mrs.  Blake  began  to  complain  of  him  in  letters 
to  her  sister,  and  Stephen  felt  furiously  sorry  for  him 
when  he  read  them.  In  the  middle  of  the  next  winter 
the  boy  was  very  ill  and  was  sent  home.  Mrs.  Blake 
was  aghast  at  his  looks  and  not  satisfied  as  to  what  had 
been  done  for  him.  She  became  very  angry  with  the 
authorities  of  his  school  and  assured  her  sister  that 
never,  never  should  he  go  there  again.  Her  optimism 
having  broken  down,  she  wrote  obviously  exaggerated 
accounts  of  Horace's  miseries  from  the  first  day  he 
went  to  school.  To  make  Horace  well  and  happy 
became  her  only  thought  and  her  multiple  devotions 
seemed  to  fall  off  rather  easily.  Horace  had  not  been 
without  his  admirers  among  the  schoolboys,  and  he 
now  amused  himself  by  writing  for  their  benefit,  poems 
and  plays,  dramatising  the  "infernal  regions"  from 
which  he  had  escaped.  It  seemed  to  Stephen  that 
there  was  very  great  power  in  one  or  two  of  these. 
The  boys  returned  them  by  request,  with  chortlings 
and  chucklings  of  delight  very  queerly  expressed. 
Horace  was  sixteen  and  a  half  when  he  left  school. 
At  eighteen  he  gained  a  history  scholarship — the  only 
academic  distinction  he  ever  achieved — and  went 
to  Oxford.  With  no  connections  in  the  University, 
with  barely  enough  to  pay  his  way,  with  no  friends 
coming  up  from  other  schools,  he  yet  made  his  own 
circle  very  quickly.  His  "queer  mug,"  as  the  boys 
at  school  had  called  it,  had  instantaneous  attraction 
for  some  sort  of  men.  Appreciation  of  Horace  Blake 


Horace    BlaKe  225 

was  like  a  peculiar  taste  in  wines  or  in  cigars.  Very 
different  men  shared  it,  but  not  a  large  number  taken 
altogether.  Those  who. did  were  rather  proud  of  their 
discernment  later  in  life. 


V 
DON'T  SAY  POOR  FRANCE 

THE  sacristan  at  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  had  set  herself 
against  the  doctor  in  the  matter  of  an  operation 
on  M.  le  Cure".  She  shook  her  head  when  the  sous- 
vicaire  told  her  that  it  had  gone  off  splendidly.  The 
vicaire  and  the  sous-vicaire,  being  men,  were  quite 
satisfied  at  the  excellent  reports  from  the  Hospice  for 
the  clergy,  where  they  had  taken  the  poor,  good,  too- 
confiding  man.  The  only  person  who  sympathised 
with  the  sacristan  was  the  little  old  priest  who  had 
aggravated  her  for  so  long.  Le  tout  petit  in  his  absent- 
minded,  fumbling  attitude,  with  his  fine,  white, 
silky  hair  shining  in  the  sun,  stood  one  morning  at 
the  sacristan's  door. 

"He  is  not  so  well, "  he  said. 

"Of  course  not,"  said  the  sacristan  sharply. 

"  I  wish, "  said  the  old  priest,  "  I  have  always  wished, 
that  he  had  refused  to  undergo  this  operation. " 

"Ah!  mais  Monsieur  1'Abbe"  a  joliment  raison, " 
said  the  sacristan. 

And  from  that  moment  she  softened  perceptibly  to 
the  old  priest,  who  had  hitherto  seemed  to  her  nothing 
but  a  futile  encumbrance  who  did  not  realise  his  own 
uselessness.  She  had  soon  nothing  to  say  in  the  con- 
fessional about  her  wicked  feelings  as  to  one  whom 
she  ought  to  respect. 

The  cure  came  back,  having  made  a  wonderful 
recovery,  but  it  soon  became  evident  that  he  must  be 

226 


Horace    BlaKe  227 

in  future  a  complete  invalid.  He  did  not  at  once  tell 
them  that  he  could  be  a  parish  priest  no  longer;  he 
could  not  damp  the  delight  with  which  they  had 
received  him  back.  He  went  about  very  slowly 
through  the  village,  giving  and  receiving  greetings, 
asking  after  each  person's  health  and  troubles  and 
affairs  with  extraordinary  gentleness  and  tact,  always 
with  a  touch  of  reserve,  and  words  that  were  not 
important  in  themselves.  The  tall,  upright  figure, 
with  the  weather-beaten  face,  carrying  its  secrets  of 
spiritual  peace  and  physical  suffering,  seemed  to  create 
its  own  atmosphere  as  it  passed  through  the  groups  in 
the  little  market-place  under  the  big  cross.  One  day 
he  stood  in  the  sacristan's  doorway,  filling  up  vastly 
more  of  the  space  than  was  taken  up  by  le  tout  petit. 
The  sacristan,  mournfully  tender,  but  also  somewhat 
official  in  aspect,  put  forward  the  old  arm-chair  which 
had  been  her  father's. 

"II  fait  beau  temps,"  said  the  cure,  also  a  little 
official  in  his  manner  to  the  sacristan.  Presently  she 
asked  how  he  found  himself. 

"Comme  ci,  comme  ga, "  he  said,  balancing  his  out- 
stretched hand,  as  if  the  thumb  and  the  little  finger 
were  the  extreme  ends  of  the  scales.  He  valued 
the  sacristan  very  highly — a  discreet  woman,  he 
always  said,  which  was,  from  him,  enthusiastic 
praise. 

"  M.  le  Vicaire  does  all  the  work, "  the  cure  went  on. 

"He  does  very  well,"  said  the  sacristan  as  if  giving 
in  a  report  to  a  superior  official.  "  He  gets  older, "  she 
went  on,  "that  was  all  he  wanted." 

"  Pre'cise'ment, "  said  the  cure.  They  were  both 
thinking  of  a  moment  at  which  the  vicaire  had  shown 
himself  distinctly  too  young. 


228  Horace    BlaKe 

1 '  He  will  do  well  now ;  these  last  months  he  has  had 
much  to  do." 

"He  does  very  well,"  repeated  the  sacristan. 

Then  the  cure  changed  the  conversation,  and  among 
other  things  they  spoke  of  Trix  Blake.  She  had 
written  twice  to  the  cure  and  once  to  the  sacristan. 
She  had  sent  the  cure  an  enormous  photograph  of 
her  father,  and  to  the  sacristan  she  had  sent  a  fine 
Scotch  shawl. 

"Has  she  become  a  Catholic  yet?"  The  sacristan 
asked  her  question  with  just  a  touch  of  sharpness. 
She  could  not  understand  why  the  cure  had  not  re- 
ceived the  poor  child  while  she  was  in  such  excellent 
dispositions. 

"No,"  said  the  cure  with  all  his  gentle  reserve  to 
the  fore.  "No,  not  yet." 

Then  they  spoke  of  how  the  new  Maire  came  to 
Mass  on  Sundays. 

"That  produces  the  most  excellent  effect, "  said  the 
sacristan. 

Presently  he  went  away  with  some  little  joke  about 
the  cat.  The  sacristan  sat  down  and  cried  for  a  long 
time.  The  cure  had  in  that  short  visit  resigned  his 
position  as  parish  priest  and  had  appointed  M.  le 
Vicaire.  He  and  she  had  come  to  that  decision. 
Bishops  might  nominate,  parishioners  have  their  views, 
but  the  matter  was  really  settled.  It  would  not  be 
so  peaceful  for  the  sacristan  in  future  as  it  had  been  for 
the  last  thirty  years. 

Then  le  tout  petit  went  away  for  a  week's  retreat, 
and  he  came  after  that  to  the  sacristan's  house,  look- 
ing more  alert  than  she  had  ever  seen  him. 

Almost  at  once  he  said: 

"He  is  weaker." 


Horace  BlaKe  229 

"  Yes,  he  is  weaker,"  said  the  sacristan. 

"  I  saw  the  bishop,"  said  le  tout  petit. 

The  sacristan  put  forward  her  father's  chair. 

"  M.  le  Cure  has  sent  in  his  resignation, "  said  le  tout 
petit. 

"I  knew  it, "  said  the  sacristan. 

"You   are   discreet." 

"All  the  world  knows  that," — the  sharp  features 
looked  a  little  sharper. 

"Of  whom  else  can  I  ask  this  question?"  said  the 
priest  as  if  to  himself.  "Tiens!  here  it  is.  Tell  me 
what  is  this  story  of  the  vicaire  and  the  police. " 

"They  have  got  hold  of  that,  have  they?" 

"The  bishop  has  always  been  kind  to  me,"  said  le 
tout  petit,  to  whom  everybody  had  not  always  been 
kind.  "He  talked  touchingly  of  M.  le  Cure*.  Then 
he  felt  his  way  with  me  as  to  the  vicaire.  I  saw  he 
hesitated.  I  told  him  that  the  vicaire  is  admirable,  is 
beloved.  '  So  much  discretion  is  needed  in  these  days,' 
said  the  bishop. "  He  paused. 

The  sacristan's  acute  eyes  pierced  him  like  gimlets. 

"He  thinks  highly  of  the  second  vicaire — a  man  of 
weight,  of  discretion." 

"But  that  would  never  do,"  cried  the  sacristan. 
"He  is  learned,  correct,"  she  went  on,  "but  never 
would  he  understand  the  people  here." 

"  It  ought  not  to  be, "  said  the  little  man  excitedly. 
"To  send  the  vicaire  away  from  here  would  do  great 
harm  to  the  cause  of  religion.  Besides,  what  have 
they  against  him?  What  is  this  about  the  police?" 

"  It  is  simply  this, "  said  the  sacristan.  ' '  There  was 
a  man  here — a  bad  man,  who  drank  and  was  wicked. 
His  poor  wife  was  half -starved  and  feeble.  One  day 
the  vicaire  found  him  in  the  act  of  beating  his  wife,  so 


230  Horace    BlaKe 

the  vicaire  just  beat  him.  He  was  strong,  but  the 
vicaire  was  so  angry  he  had  plenty  of  force  in  his  fists. " 

"Tiens!  quel  histoire!"  cried  le  tout  petit,  all  aghast. 

"The  man  had  the  vicaire  up  for  assault,  and  every 
paper  in  France  had  paragraphs  about  this  murderous 
vicaire.  When  it  came  to  the  trial,  the  vicaire  said 
exactly  what  he  had  done,  whereupon  the  man  said 
that  the  vicaire  had  been  too  attentive  to  his  wife  and 
she  got  frightened  and  said  that  all  her  husband  said 
was  true.  Everyone  in  this  country  knew  it  was  all 
wicked  lies,  but  it  did  harm  all  over  France,  I  have 
been  told." 

"Bishops  naturally  don't  like  such  incidents." 

"The  vicaire  got  a  slight  fine,  but  everyone  here  was 
with  him.  The  wicked  man  and  his  wife  had  to  leave 
the  village,  the  people  made  it  too  hot  for  them.  But 
it  was  twelve  or  fifteen  years  ago." 

She  was  frowning  with  her  effort  to  remember  the 
exact  date. 

"Who  has  talked  to  this  new  bishop  about  it?" 

" Somebody  from  here, "  said  le  tout  petit,  "and  it  is 
a  thousand  pities." 

The  sacristan  ran  her  eyes  over  the  village,  as  it  were, 
and  discovered  no  one.  Then  she  flushed  a  deep  red. 

"M.  le  Sous- Vicaire  made  his  retreat  the  week 
before  you,  M.  1'AbbeV' 

Le  tout  petit  took  his  breviary  out  of  his  pocket  and 
then  moved  it  from  one  hand  to  the  other. 

"A  good  man, "  he  said,  "but  too  severe,  too  correct. 
I  'm  afraid  he  did  make  his  retreat  the  week  before 
me." 

The  sacristan  looked  very  dark  indeed. 

"That  one  is  ambitious,"  thought  she  to  herself. 
"Well,  he  may  be  made  a  bishop,  an  archbishop,  a 


Horace    BlaKe  231 

Pope,  for  all  I  care,  but  he  shall  not  be  cure  of  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies." 

It  was  a  very  painful  moment  of  disillusion  for  the 
sacristan.  It  was  a  shock  to  her  faith  in  clerical 
human  nature. 

After  all,  what  had  passed  between  the  bishop  and 
the  sous-vicaire  had  been  very  little.  It  was  only  that 
the  bishop,  in  the  garden  of  the  Eveche — a  wretched, 
modern  house  which  had  been  chosen  on  account  of  its 
low  rent — walking  on  the  burnt  grass  so  as  to  keep  in 
the  shadow  of  the  building,  had  given  the  sous-vicaire 
the  opportunity  of  talking  to  the  vicaire. 

"A  zealous,  indiscreet,  rough  peasant,  who  had  once 
got  into  trouble  with  the  police."  Not  a  word  said 
had  been  untrue.  The  sous-vicaire  thought  he  had 
spoken  handsomely  of  his  confrere  whom  he  tried  not 
to  dislike. 

To  the  amazement  of  le  tout  petit,  who  had  only  con- 
sulted the  sacristan  as  a  discreet  woman  who  woxild 
tell  him  the  facts  and  let  him  know  what  was  thought 
of  them  in  the  village,  that  official  said  calmly: 

"The  time  has  come  when  I  must  speak  to  the 
bishop  myself. " 

Le  tout  petit  looked  a  little  dazed  at  this  announce- 
ment; his  breviary  slipped  on  to  the  floor.  He 
stooped  to  pick  it  up  and  his  face  was  flushed. 

"I  will  not  say  that  you  spoke  to  me,"  she  said 
reassuringly,  but  with  perhaps  a  tinge  of  contempt. 

The  old  priest  went  away,  feeling  that  he  had 
called  greater  forces  into  action  than  he  had  at  all 
intended. 

Then  he  went  and  sat  by  M.  le  Cure"  in  the  garden  of 
the  presbytery,  looking  no  more  alive  than  usual. 
They  spoke  a  little,  and  then  read  their  breviaries — • 


232  Horace    BlaKe 

le  tout  petit  closed  his  some  minutes  after  the  cure  had 
put  his  own  in  his  pocket. 

"  It  is  curious  how  some  good  men  are  ambitious, 
he  said  hesitatingly. 

"It  is  sometimes  that  they  know  they  have  powers 
to  use  for  God,  and  want  to  use  them. " 

"But  if  it  makes  them  do  wrong?" 

"Human  nature  is  complicated,  and  'the  devil 
exhibits  his  finest  skill  in  dealing  with  the  good.  He 
has  a  genius  for  producing  quarrels,  jealousies,  wraths, 
between  the  good." 

The  cure's  mind  had  gone  back  to  various  things 
that  had  shocked  him  in  his  seminary  experience. 

"It  is  amazing,"  he  said,  "the  misunderstandings, 
the  hurt  feelings,  the  sufferings  of  those  who  are  trying 
to  be  good. " 

He  broke  off  and  became  quite  silent. 

The  sacristan  had  never  had  the  heart  to  go  on  a 
journey  since  her  sister's  death.  She  knew  she  would 
not  enjoy  it,  and  besides,  her  sister  had  had  courage 
for  two  and  she  herself  was  nervous  on  the  railroad. 
So  there  was  great  astonishment  when  the  sacristan, 
having  obtained  permission  for  a  holiday  to  visit 
some  relations,  and  having  arranged  for  sufficient 
attention  to  her  cat,  locked  the  door  of  her  house  in 
sight  of  the  village  and  walked  off.  She  went  in  her 
Breton  cap,  wearing  her  large  shawl,  with  a  big  brown 
basket  and  a  sturdy  umbrella  in  her  hands.  The 
folds  of  her  blue  stuff  skirt  hid  her  leanness,  and  her 
black  apron  was  neatly  fastened  on  her  flat,  narrow 
chest.  The  sharp,  determined  features  relaxed  a  little 
as  she  passed  the  presbytery  garden.  She  was  amused 
in  the  train  by  a  little  cheery  soldier  who  talked  to  her 


Horace    BlaKe  233 

about  his  mother  and  who  sang  an  interminable 
ballad  when  conversation  failed.  She  was  very  tired 
when  she  arrived  at  her  cousin's  house,  and  was 
hospitably  received  and  made  to  rest  and  take  coffee. 

She  was  a  little  grand,  perhaps,  with  the  cousin,  who 
was  inclined  to  be  humble,  and  she  condescended  to 
enjoy  the  baby's  conversation,  but  she  soon  said  she 
she  must  go  out  to  the  Eveche.  She  had  started  from 
home  very  early,  and  it  was  only  two  o'clock  when  she 
asked  at  his  door  if  she  might  see  Monseigneur.  The 
last  time  she  had  been  in  the  cathedral  town  Monsei- 
gneur, the  bishop  then  living,  had  inhabited  the  real 
grand  Eveche  close  to  the  cathedral,  with  its  fine  garden 
and  its  magnificent  view  of  the  surrounding  country. 
The  real  Eveche  was  now  shut  up  by  the  Government, 
the  garden  walks  were  grass-grown,  hardly  anything 
was  in  flower,  a  window  broken  here  and  there,  the 
door  was  stained  with  wet,  and  the  old  iron  gate  rusty. 
The  present  building  had  certainly  nothing  preten- 
tious about  its  square,  bald  ugliness,  and  the  garden, 
mon  Dieu!  was  no  garden  at  all. 

The  bishop  was  a  man  of  whom  many  were  to  hear 
later  on.  He  was  at  present  only  at  the  first  stages  of 
undertaking  more  work  than  he  could  possibly  achieve. 
He  was  considered  a  dangerous  man  already  by  the 
Government,  and  there  had  been  rumours  since  he  was 
made  bishop  that  he  was  not  absolutely  orthodox. 
But  five  years  later,  when  he  died  of  overwork  and 
strain,  they  all  knew  what  manner  of  man  they  had 
lost.  From  the  first  to  the  last  he  was  an  optimist. 
He  would  not  croak  himself  nor  allow  others  to  croak. 
In  his  worn  cassock,  in  his  barely-furnished  study,  or 
in  the  garden  that  was  not  a  garden,  he  looked  as  if 
he  were  sure  of  some  success,  some  conquest  to  be 


234  Horace   BlaKe 

achieved.  In  the  retreats  in  his  house  no  groans  were 
heard  over  the  hopeless  state  of  poor  France,  no  pro- 
phecies of  the  terrible  punishments  that  must  await 
the  persecutors  of  the  Church.  The  weak-kneed  grew 
stalwart  in  his  company,  he  taught  confidence  in 
action,  courage — all  things  work  together  for  good,  he 
would  say.  He  would  join  no  political  party,  put  no 
faith  in  dreams;  he  was  not  anxious  about  his  own 
reputation  for  orthodoxy,  he  was  too  thoroughly  sure 
of  himself  on  that  point.  His  priests  adored  him, 
each  one  saying  as  le  tout  petit  said :  ' '  He  has  always 
been  kind  to  me." 

Of  course  he  would  see  the  sacristan  from  St.  Jean 
des  Pluies,  although  he  was  struggling  with  a  document 
from  Paris  bursting  with  cold,  official  tyranny,  and 
insolence.  He  knew  something  of  the  sacristan  by 
reputation.  The  sacristan  was  not  the  least  nervous. 
If  he  were  in  command  in  that  diocese,  she  was  also  an 
official  of  much  longer  standing  than  he  was.  The 
face  at  which  she  looked  was  a  strong  one,  not  .subtle, 
not  as  spiritual,  perhaps,  at  first  sight,  as  that  of  some 
priests  .she  had  known.  He  soon  inquired  after  M. 
le  Cure",  and  she  said,  "He  is  getting  weaker;  he  has 
been  sinking  ever  since  his  operation."  Evidently 
the  operation  was  not  approved  by  this  decided  little 
woman. 

"He  will  have  a  grand  account  up  there,"  said 
Monseigneur. 

"I  have  been  thirty  years  sacristan  at  St.  Jean  des 
Pluies.  I  am  only  half  a  sacristan  now,  for  we  did  it 
between  us,  my  sister  and  I,  but  we  were  a  very  good 
sacristan  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  I  know  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies  comme  ma  poche,  Monseigneur. " 

"No  doubt  of  it, "  said  the  bishop  kindly. 


Horace    BlaKe  235 

"The  people  of  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  can  be  influenced, 
can  be  led  by  anybody  they  love,  Monseigneur.  Now 
the  vicaire  can  do  anything  with  them. "  She  paused 
and  coughed. 

The  bishop  understood  and  was  touched,  and  also, 
possibly,  amused. 

"That  vicaire, "  she  proceeded,  "is  the  sort  of  shep- 
herd who  would  give  his  life  for  his  sheep,  for  any  one 
of  them.  He  was  young,  too  young  once,  Monsei- 
gneur, but  he  is  steady  now,  he  would  not  now  forget 
himself  in  his  zeal. "  She  thus  skated  lightly  over  the 
delicate  subject.  "  I  wish  you  could  hear  him  preach, 
Monseigneur,  the  men  come  to  listen  to  that  one." 

"You  have  more  than  one  good  preacher, "  said  the 
bishop. 

"Ah,  Monseigneur  means  M.  Didon — lle  tout  petif 
we  call  him — a  gentle  soul,  does  no  harm  to  anybody." 
She  calmly  ignored  the  sous-vicaire,  and  the  bishop 
saw  through  her  diplomacy. 

"The  vicaire  only  the  other  day  converted  a  free- 
mason— a  terrible  man — and  he  left  his  money  to  the 
Church." 

"I  hope  he  had  no  family  then,"  said  the  bishop 
dryly. 

"There  was  enough  money  for  everybody,"  she 
hastened  to  reassure  him. 

"If  a  child  dies,  if  a  fisherman  is  missing  when  the 
boats  come  back  in  the  autumn,  it  is  only  the  vicaire 
who  can  give  comfort." 

"And  when  he  was  too  young,"  said  the  bishop; 
"was  that  very  long  ago?" 

"Yes,  that  was  quite  fifteen  years  ago.  Monsei- 
gneur, he  had  a  warm  heart  and  M.  le  Cur£  loved  him 
from  the  first,  but  he  could  not  bear  to  see  cruelty. 


236  Horace    BlaKe 

There  was  a  very  bad  man  and  he  beat  his  wife, 
and  the  vicaire,  Monseigneur,  quite  without  previous 
intention,  beat  the  bad  man." 

"Good  sound  blows?"  asked  the  bishop. 

"He  was  very  angry,  Monseigneur,"  and  she  pro- 
ceeded to  tell  the  story  as  she  had  told  it  to  le  tout  petit. 
When  she  had  concluded  the  bishop  said: 

"Well,  I  am  very  glad  you  feel  like  that.  Yesterday 
I  appointed  your  vicaire  in  succession  to  the  cure.  I 
am  glad  that  he  will  have  the  support  of  the  sacristan ; 
it  is  so  important  for  a  priest.  And  now  remember,  if 
he  does  not  always  please  you,  he  was  your  own  choice 
and  put  up  with  him." 

The  sacristan  cared  far  too  much  for  her  cause  to 
regret  that  she  had  taken  a  journey  for  nothing. 

The  bishop  said  suddenly: 

"And  do  you  pray  for  me?" 

"Sometimes,"  said  the  truthful  sacristan. 

"Do  it  every  day,"  he  said  earnestly.  "I  need  it; 
and  you  pray  for  France?" 

"Ah,  for  poor  France,  but  yes!" 

" Don't  say  'poor  France, ' "  said  the  bishop.  "Say 
'glorious  France,'  where  the  battle  forces  of  good  and 
evil  are  at  their  hottest  and  fiercest,  and  where  the 
good  will  triumph — after  you  and  I  are  gone. " 

The  sacristan  never  told  them  in  St.  Jean  des  Pluies 
why  she  had  been  to  see  her  relations — she  just  beamed 
at  le  tout  petit  and  said,  "It  was  all  settled  before  I  got 
there,"  with  the  air  of  a  St.  Paul  whose  visit  had 
proved  unnecessary  for  putting  one  special  thing  in 
order. 

Presently  came  the  official  announcement.  M.  le 
Cure  was  to  retire  and  repose  himself  after  his  many 
labours.  M.  le  Vicaire  was  to  replace  him.  M.  le 


Horace    BlaKe  237 

Sous-Vicaire  was  appointed  vicaire  in  a  town  parish, 
and  le  tout  petit  was  actually  to  take  his  place  at  St. 
Jean  des  Pluies.  Le  tout  petit  brightened  exceedingly 
at  this  most  unconventional  arrangement ;  he  was  de- 
termined to  show  the  bishop  that  he  was  right  in 
supposing  that  he  had  work  left  in  him  still.  He  who 
had  been  a  cure  himself!  The  sacristan  was  almost 
shocked,  but  being  a  Christian  as  well  as  a  sacristan, 
she  decided  to  be  edified  instead. 


VI 

LET   ME    GO   TO    BRITTANY 

ANNE  CONISTON  was  getting  out  of  all  patience 
with  Trix.  Trix  was  behaving  as  if  she  were 
absolutely  broken-hearted,  as  if  she  felt  her  life  to  be 
over.  Was  it  possible  that  Horace  Blake's  death 
could  really  be  such  a  crushing  blow  to  the  girl  who  had 
barely  known  him  six  months  before?  Trix  was,  her 
aunt  decided,  evidently  interested  in  her  own  role 
of  mourner;  if  she  really  felt  so  much  she  was  very 
ready  to  let  other  people  see  it;  there  was  no  reserve 
or  restraint  about  it. 

They  had  left  Wimbledon,  and  were  staying  in 
Anne's  little  cottage. 

"  I  don't  think  you  quite  see  what  a  shock  it  has  all 
been  to  her  nerves,"  said  Kate. 

"Oh,  I  quite  see  that,"  said  Anne;  "but  what  pro- 
vokes me  is  this  air  of  being  the  only  person  who 
understood  her  father.  More  than  once  she  has 
quoted  Horace's  opinions  in  contradiction  to  some- 
thing you  have  said." 

"I  know,"  said  Kate,  "and  of  course  she  will 
always  take  the  things  he  said  to  those  priests  as 
of  supreme  importance." 

"I  suppose  the  poison  in  his  system  did  affect  the 
brain  a  little, "  said  Anne  tentatively.  They  had  not 
talked  as  intimately  as  this  since  the  day  when  Kate 
had  told  her  that  Horace  had  received  sentence  of 
condemnation. 

238 


Horace    BlaKe  239 

"I  think,"  said  Kate,  "that  the  effort  he  made  to 
write  the  last  act  of  the  play  was  too  much  for  him. 
This  religious  nonsense  began  directly  after  that.  I 
wonder  what  these  good  folk  would  think  of  his  piety 
if  they  could  read  this  play!  I  can't  help  being  glad 
that  it  was  written  at  St.  Jean  des  Pluies,  and  so  near 
the  end.  The  priests  over  there  made  no  crowing  at 
having  got  him ;  I  think  they  knew  that  this  would  be 
a  doubtful  conversion  to  boast  of. " 

Anne  suppressed  some  remark  as  to  Horace  that 
nearly  rose  to  her  lips. 

"Kate,"  she  said  abruptly,  "have  you  made  any 
plans  about  Trix?" 

Kate  came  back  from  the  thoughts  of  Horace  and 
blushed. 

"She  is  nearly  eighteen,"  said  Anne.  "I  can't 
say  that  at  present  I  see  any  prospect  of  her  attempt- 
ing to  be  any  comfort  to  you. " 

"However  much  she  attempted  to  be  that  she 
could  hardly  succeed,"  said  Kate  sadly. 

"I  will  keep  her  here  if  that  would  be  the  least 
help, "  said  Anne. 

"  I  would  far  rather  have  her  with  me, " — and  then, 
after  a  hesitation:  "Anne,  does  it  not  seem  a  little 
hard  that  the  poor  child's  one  idea  of  me  is  that  as  a 
mother  I  am  a  complete  failure?  If  I  had  foreseen  all 
the  torture  she  would  cause  me,  I  wonder  if  I  could 
have  done  it. "  Then  with  a  wan  smile,  "Yes,  I  would 
have  done  it,  anyhow." 

"I  am  not  sure  it  was  right,"  said  Anne. 

"Nor  am  I,"  faltered  Kate;  "and  what  is  hard  on 
the  child  now  is  that  we  blame  her  for  not  being  a 
daughter  to  me  when  I  have  been  no  mother  to  her." 

Anne  was  silent.     She  was  hurt  on  her  own  account 


240  Horace    BlaKe 

both  with  Trix  and  with  Kate.  She  seemed  to  come 
in  very  little  after  the  years  in  which  she  had  brought 
up  Trix. 

" It  is  a  false  position, "  said  Anne,  "and  I  want  you 
to  consider  now  whether  it  would  not  be  far  better  to 
let  her  know  the  truth.  She  takes  everything  as  her 
right;  she  does  nothing  for  you;  she  resents  my 
authority  in  the  smallest  things.  Besides,  she  is  only 
waiting  to  become  a  Roman  Catholic.  She  is  not  the 
same  girl  who  left  me  to  go  abroad  with  her  father." 

"She  is  such  a  child, "  said  Kate.  "I  shall  give  her 
three  hundred  a  year  from  the  time  she  is  twenty-one, 
and  she  can  make  a  life  of  her  own  if  she  wants  to. " 

Anne  had  been  profoundly  irritated  by  the  situation 
for  a  long  time  past ;  she  made  an  effort  not  to  speak 
harshly. 

"I  don't  know  how  the  next  three  years  will  be 
passed,"  she  said. 

"I  must  do  the  best  I  can,"  said  Kate  simply. 
"And  you,  Anne,  have  done  far,  far  too  much  already. 
I  can  never,  never  be  thankful  enough  to  you  for 
that." 

"No,  I  haven't,"  said  Anne,  mollified;  "but  I 
think  it  is  very  hard  that  you  and  I  cannot  live  to- 
gether without  Trix,  and  it  would  be  a  mistake  for  us 
to  live  all  three  in  the  same  house." 

Kate  had  never  thought  of  living  with  her  sister; 
she  longed  to  be  quite  alone. 

"I  must  be  in  London  for  some  time,"  she  said, 
"and  Trix  can  live  with  me.  She  will  soon  make  her 
own  friends  and  go  her  own  way." 

That  same  day  Kate  was  made  more  acutely  aware 
of  Trix's  state  of  mind  than  she  had  hitherto  been. 
The  widow  had  been  far  too  much  absorbed  to  notice 


Horace    BlaKe  241 

many  things  that  exasperated  Anne.  It  was  greatly 
Anne's  incapacity  for  any  sympathetic  feeling  for 
Trix  at  the  time  of  her  father's  death  that  had  shut 
the  child  up  in  herself  and  made  her  morbid.  Trix 
was  fond  of  Aunt  Anne  and  had  taken  for  granted  that 
she  would  be  sympathetic;  but  when  Anne  came  out 
to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  she  had  been  entirely  unrespon- 
sive as  to  what  Trix  wanted  to  tell  her  about  her 
father.  Anne's  one  thought  had  been  for  Kate. 

It  was  only  Stephen  Tempest  who  had  allowed 
Trix  the  relief  of  telling  her  story.  Since  going  back 
to  the  cottage  she  had  been  writing  a  great  deal  on 
authors'  pads  in  her  own  room,  and  Anne  half  sus- 
pected what  she  was  doing — she  was  writing  a  com- 
plete account  of  her  father's  last  days  at  St.  Jean  des 
Pluies.  She  would  come  to  meals  with  the  tears  on 
her  cheeks,  and  refuse  to  eat  more  than  green  vege- 
tables and  to  drink  anything  but  black  coffee.  She 
had  resented  Anne's  authority  after  this  interlude 
and  seemed  really  hurt  if  she  insisted  on  proper  food 
and  exercise.  Anne  had  a  vague  notion  that  Trix's 
writing  on  authors'  pads  was  a  kind  of  legendary 
account  of  a  holy  man's  death,  and  she  was  not  far  out 
in  this  idea;  but  she  did  not  know  that  Trix  had  in- 
herited quite  enough  talent  for  it  to  be  so  far  true  and 
beautiful  that  it  could  never  be  quite  ignored  by  any 
student  of  Blake's  life  in  the  future. 

It  was  after  tea  on  the  same  day  on  which  Anne  had 
pressed  the  question  of  Trix's  future  on  Kate's  atten- 
tion. Anne  had  gone  out  and  Kate  and  Trix  were 
alone  in  the  little  sitting-room  of  the  cottage.  Anne 
and  Trix  had  snapped  at  one  another  more  than  once 
during  tea.  Kate  had  never  snapped  in  her  life,  she 
could  have  given  no  canine  sound  smaller  than  a  deep 

16 


242  Horace   BlaKe 

growl.  When  they  were  alone  Trix,  with  a  flushed 
face,  spoke  suddenly: 

"Aunt  Anne  won't  want  me  to  live  here  any  more. " 

Kate  leaned  back  in  her  chair  with  the  calm  of  one 
who  had  been  in  straits  half  her  life  and  does  not 
expect  anything  smooth  or  easy  to  come  in  her  way. 

"If  you  come  to  London  with  me  in  October  you 
could  finish  your  education  by  getting  lessons  there. " 

"  May  I  say  what  I  want  to  do? "  said  Trix,  evidently 
on  the  verge  of  tears. 

"Of  course." 

"I  want  you  to  let  me  go  back  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies. 
They  would  take  me  for  five  francs  a  day,  and  there  is 
an  old  English  lady  going  to  spend  the  winter  there 
who  would  chaperon  me.  The  manageress  says  she 
is  of  a  good  English  family.  Then  I  could  learn 
French,  and  I — I  believe — "  she  stammered,  "that 
I  am  going  to  be  able  to  write  books  and — and" — 
defiantly — "I  could  visit  father's  grave." 

This  seemed  intolerable  to  Kate,  especially  that  last 
touch.  Trix  was  so  tragically  possessive  of  Horace, 
and  though  it  was  too  pathetic  for  it  to  excite  Kate's 
anger  as  it  did  Anne's,  it  added  to  the  difficulties  of 
the  false  position  they  lived  in. 

Trix  began  to  cry. 

"You  don't  want  me,  I  know;  but  you  want  me  to 
be  respectable  in  the  world's  eyes " 

Kate  gave  a  start. 

"  — and  I  know  you  mean  to  be  kind.  Oh,  why  not 
let  me  go  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies?" 

Kate  took  a  moment  for  thought. 

"Trix, "  she  said  earnestly,  "Anne  knows  how  much 
I  want  to  keep  you.  But,  anyhow,  there  is  one  thing 
that  you  and  I  wish  to  do  more  than  anything  else, 


Horace    BlaKe  243 

and  that  is  what  your  father  would  have  wished.  I 
am  convinced  that  he  would  have  wished  you  to  be 
with  me  all  this  first  year  after  his  death;  he  would 
not  have  wished  you  to  be  at  an  hotel  under  the  care 
of  a  chaperon  found  by  the  manageress.  I  am  sorry 
to  refuse  this,  dear  child,  but  I  can  only  do  what  I  see 
is  right." 

The  generous  side  in  Trix  was  reached. 

"I  suppose  you  are  right." 

It  was  a  great  effort  to  give  up  that  darling  scheme 
of  getting  back  to  St.  Jean  des  Pluies. 

"I  think  you  will  write  well,"  said  Mrs.  Blake 
kindly.  "It  is  so  likely  that  you  should  inherit  the 
power.  I  should  like  you  to  have  some  good  courses 
in  literature.  We  might  ask  Mr.  Tempest  to  advise 
us  about  that." 

Trix  looked  brighter.  She  had  not  expected  her 
mother  to  take  any  interest  in  this  question  of  her 
writing. 


VII 

IS    THIS    HORACE    BLAKE? 

IT  was  magnificent  September  weather,  and  Trix 
took  her  solitary  little  self  out  walking  constantly. 
She  did  not  write  for  many  hours  at  a  time,  and  often 
when  Anne  thought  she  was  shut  up  in  her  room,  she 
had  run  out  unnoticed  and  was  pacing  up  and  down 
one  of  the  grass  roads  on  the  common. 

There  she  could  dream  of  her  father  and  Stephen 
Tempest,  walking  with  them  in  the  sunset  at  St.  Jean 
des  Pluies.  Her  nerves,  as  Kate  said,  were  still 
suffering  from  the  strain  she  had  undergone,  but  her 
imagination  was  in  a  stage  of  immense  development. 
Such  a  combination  of  age  and  circumstances  would 
have  brought  some  expansion  in  any  girl,  but  in  Trix 
there  was  the  hereditary  gift  ready  to  develop  with 
alarming  rapidity. 

Anne  had  very  little  imagination,  and  this  new 
Trix  was  exasperating  to  the  woman  who  thought  she 
had  moulded  the  former  Trix  in  a  shape  that  would  be 
durable. 

Trix  dreamed  of  the  day  at  St.  Jean  des  Pluies  when 
she  would  become  a  Catholic,  and  be  united  more 
closely  to  her  father;  she  prayed  to  him  that  the 
intervening  time  would  be  short.  Hers  was  not  the 
close  hungry  sorrow  of  a  child  who  has  been  brought 
up  at  a  parent's  knee;  it  was  more  romantic  than 
domestic,  to  put  it  crudely,  and  yet  it  included  the 
almost  maternal  yearning  after  what  had  been  in  her 

244 


Horace   BlaKe  245 

care,  what  had  needed  her  love  and  her  patience; 
nobody  needed  her  now. 

She  would  pace  up  and  down  a  long  stretch  of  soft 
turf  just  in  the  shade  of  the  rough  oaks  whose  acorns 
fell  with  a  thud  on  the  bare  ground  beneath.  She 
would  stop  sometimes  just  to  listen  to  them  falling, 
thud,  thud,  almost  as  if  the  heart  of  the  oak  had  gone 
throb,  throb.  Sometimes  she  felt  suddenly  as  if  she 
could  not  endure  the  sound;  it  was  so  extraordinarily 
lonely  and  with  something  imperious  in  its  detachment. 
There  was  some  mysterious  intercourse  between  the 
oak-tree  and  the  earth,  a  sense  of  law  and  fate  shared 
between  them.  Through  the  centuries  the  acorns  had 
fallen  thud,  thud,  on  the  earth,  their  time  of  individual 
life  being  accomplished ;  and  through  the  ages  men  had 
gone  down  into  the  earth,  and  thud,  thud,  had  come 
the  spadefuls  of  earth  to  cover  them  up.  Only, 
thought  Trix,  looking  up  at  the  lightness  of  the  blue 
sky,  Christianity  had  defeated  the  treason  that  the 
oaks  and  the  earth  muttered  in  their  intercourse. 
Immortality  was  Trix's  new  secret;  that  was  her 
horizon  now — the  infinite.  She  had  come  late  into 
her  human  heritage,  but  with  a  full  consciousness.  It 
was  astonishing  to  her  that  it  did  not  break  out  from 
her  and  show  itself.  But  she  was  hungry  for  the 
people  in  whose  eyes  she  could  see  the  new  knowledge 
reflected. 

It  was  the  first  time  that  she  had  written  anything, 
and  in  Trix  such  writing  was  utterly  genuine.  It  gave 
a  sense  of  expansion,  of  new  powers,  and  the  power  was 
really  there.  In  itself  it  was  a  strain,  this  new  work, 
though  she  did  not  know  it.  One  day  she  suddenly 
came  to  an  end.  She  had  planned  nothing,  but  she  had 
vaguely  in  her  mind  that,  after  the  narrative  of  her 


246  Horace    BlaKe 

father's  funeral,  she  would  have  things  to  say  of  her 
own,  and  that  she  would  show  how  strangely  in  the 
trumpeting  of  his  fame,  the  sweet,  low  notes  of  his 
meekness,  his  gentleness,  and  his  suffering  had  been 
drowned.  But  the  artist  in  her  suddenly  found  that 
she  must  come  to  an  end  with  the  last  verse  of  the 
Benedictus  sung  out  by  the  open  grave  to  the  sea 
and  the  sky,  by  the  vicaire  and  four  choir-boys  and 
five  old  women. 

She  copied  it  out  twice,  and  then,  without  serious 
misgiving,  posted  one  of  the  copies  to  Stephen 
Tempest. 

Stephen  began  to  read  the  MS.  in  an  attitude  of 
affectionate  indulgence.  There  was  something  chil- 
dish in  the  handwriting,  and  occasionally  in  the 
style.  Then  he  began  to  read  quicker,  not  dwelling  on 
details,  and  presently  he  could  hardly  get  to  the  end, 
he  was  so  profoundly  touched.  The  amazing  sim- 
plicity of  narrative  corresponded  to  the  amazing 
simplicity  of  her  outlook  on  life.  It  was  a  child  talk- 
ing of  eternal  things;  it  had  the  pity  and  the  love  of 
a  spirit  just  coming  into  touch  with  human  life.  He 
read  it  over  again  at  once.  She  had  woven  into  her 
story  bright  passages  of  her  father's  remembrances  of 
his  childhood,  of  his  talk  of  his  sister  Mary,  of  their 
reading  the  books  he  had  read  with  her,  which,  to 
Stephen,  sitting  among  the  stale  yellow  letters  tell- 
ing of  the  same  childhood  were  extraordinarily 
pathetic.  The  paper  undoubtedly  showed  the  touch 
of  genius,  though  he  did  not  conclude  that  Trix  was 
necessarily  gifted  with  genius.  He  understood  how 
the  sudden  expansion  in  her  life,  the  intercourse  with 
her  father,  his  sufferings,  his  death,  had  developed 


Horace  BlaKe  247 

her  until  she  had  like  a  plant  been  brought  to  flower 
before  the  natural  time. 

He  gave  it  to  his  mother,  who  cried  over  it,  while 
her  mouth  never  lost  an  expression  of  extreme  obstin- 
acy. Stephen  knew  that  she  would  not  own  to  its 
having  altered  her  feeling  as  to  Horace  Blake  and  his 
biography  in  the  least. 

This  paper  of  Trix  's  gave  a  great  spurt  to  Stephen's 
work;  it  was  very  curious  that  he  had  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  Horace's  life  already  so  vividly  before 
him  — the  morning  and  the  evening,  surely  those 
two  made  great  part  of  one  day. 

He  wrote  really  well  of  Horace's  childhood  under 
this  stimulus,  though  he  groaned  in  despair  at  the 
hopelessness  of  rivalling  Trix's  picture.  He  intended 
that  hers  should  be  the  last  chapter  in  his  book.  Far 
too  true  an  artist  to  be  jealous  of  yielding  her  the  last 
and  most  important  bit  of  the  whole  work,  he  simply 
rejoiced  in  the  thought  of  this  exquisitely  simple 
conclusion.  It  would  be  in  his  mind  all  the  way 
through ;  it  would  be  the  clear  note  with  which  nothing 
must  jar,  though  much  might  be  in  dramatic  contrast. 

He  knew  that  in  his  mother's  mind  was  the  amazed 
question:  Could  this  be  Horace  Blake — the  author  of 
all  the  horrid  plays  she  had  refused  to  see  or  to  read  ? 
Yes,  that  was  what  he  meant  to  show.  The  critics, 
the  public,  had  misunderstood  Blake's  work.  He  had 
been  mocking  at  false  religiosity,  not  at  true  religion ; 
at  prudery,  not  at  goodness;  he  had  felt  half  maddened 
at  the  hideous  unreality  of  European  civilisation.  He 
had  meant  to  make  men  feel  the  utter  need  of  the 
things  he  would  not  mention  in  the  same  context  with 
the  lies  he  was  exploding,  because  they  must  come  as  a 
still  voice  to  each  man's  own  heart.  He  had  disliked 


248  Horace    BlaKe 

the  idea  that  Blake  had  fallen  under  priestly  wiles, 
but  Trix's  picture  showed  no  servile  superstitious 
terrors,  nothing  but  what  was  exquisite.  And  it  came 
to  him  that  it  was  in  the  religion  of  this  simple  peasan- 
try that  Blake  had  recognised  the  spiritual  simplicity, 
the  exquisite  note  of  goodness  without  show  or  con- 
vention. He  had  gone  from  the  corrupt  world  he  had 
jeered  at  to  die  where  there  was  no  greed  for  gold,  no 
lust,  no  selfishness  masquerading  as  piety,  as  propri- 
ety, as  patriotism.  That  idea  was  the  thread  with 
which  Stephen  meant  to  draw  together  the  childhood 
and  the  last  days. 


VIII 

THE  MORNING  AND  THE  EVENING 

OTEPHEN  had  been  surprised  at  the  degree  of  inti- 
O  macy  between  Mrs.  Blake  and  the  George  Shen- 
stones  when  he  had  heard  that  they  had  lent  her  their 
house  at  Wimbledon  directly  after  her  husband's 
death.  He  had  met  Mrs.  Shenstone  several  times, 
and  had  been  equally  impressed  by  the  beauty  of  her 
jewels  and  the  entire  failure  of  her  wig.  Surely  the 
art  of  wig-making  had  advanced  beyond  this,  of  late 
years,  in  the  power  of  deception?  But  Mrs.  Shenstone, 
with  rather  juvenile  gowns  of  extremely  expensive 
effect,  and  a  complexion  that  must  have  received  con- 
siderable care,  cheerfully  wore  a  chestnut  wig,  that  lay 
in  bold,  hard  lines  against  her  forehead.  The  mystery 
of  it  grew  upon  him,  the  mystery  of  economy  in  just 
that  one  and  most  essential  article,  the  wig,  whereas 
she  wore  fortunes  in  the  shape  of  diamonds  and  pearls 
and  all  manner  of  stones,  and  a  large  income  must 
have  been  spent  on  her  dressmaker.  Her  conversation 
was  divided  between  very  ordinary  rather  shrewd 
gossip,  discussion  as  to  where  to  get  things,  and  little 
outbreaks  of  condemnation  of  certain  gross  forms 
of  vice.  Her  husband,  silent,  handsome,  and  dis- 
tinguished, was  seldom  with  her,  but  it  seemed  that  he 
was  most  solicitous  of  her  health  and  rather  strict  with 
her  on  the  score  of  carefulness.  He  was  in  the  City, 
and  very  busy. 

Stephen  had  a  notion  that  she  must  have  been  gay 
249 


250  Horace    BlaKe 

fairly  recently,  and  that  having  been  obliged  to  take  to 
a  wig  young,  she  had  reminiscences  attaching  to  this 
particular  kind  of  wig  which  prevented  her  from  im- 
proving upon  it.  But  that,  he  knew,  was  only  a  silly 
fancy.  The  thing  he  wanted  to  understand  was  why 
Mrs.  George  Shenstone  should  throw  herself  into  Mrs. 
Blake's  life,  and  how  she  secured  her  position  in  it.  It 
was  impossible  to  explain;  but  he  supposed  that  the 
love  of  famous  people  had  been  a  new  fancy  with  the 
wealthy  lady,  and  that  through  a  rather  varied  exist- 
ence she  had  not  reached  middle  life  without  some 
knowledge  of  how  to  treat  with  her  fellow-creatures. 
Anyhow,  she  had,  it  seemed,  succeeded,  and  the  villa 
at  Wimbledon  had  been  the  refuge  of  the  newspaper- 
hunted  widow. 

These  queries  and  wonderings  had  been  revived  in 
Stephen  soon  after  he  received  Trix's  paper  by  a  letter 
from  Mrs.  George  Shenstone.  Mrs.  Shenstone  wrote 
to  ask  him  to  stay  with  her  in  the  Highlands,  where 
they  had  taken  a  hunting-lodge. 

"I  had  hoped,"  she  wrote,  "to  have  had  Mrs. 
Blake  here;  it  would  have  done  her  so  much  good,  but 
she  won't  stay  with  any  friends  at  present.  I  have 
persuaded  her  to  send  me  little  Trix,  as  the  child  is 
not  very  well  and  needs  a  change. " 

Stephen  particularly  wanted  to  see  Trix,  and  to  talk 
quietly  about  her  father.  He  felt  at  once  that  it  would 
be  far  better  to  talk  to  Trix  and  to  Mrs.  Blake  when 
they  were  quite  apart.  If  he  saw  them  together,  or 
even  were  liable  to  one  interrupting  him  in  a  talk  with 
the  other,  it  would  be  impossible  to  get  from  them  all 
that  he  wanted. 

It  occurred  to  Stephen  on  his  journey  north  that  the 
wig  would  be  symbolical  of  Mrs.  Shenstone 's  treat- 


Horace    BlaKe  251 

ment  of  the  Highlands,  and  when  she  gave  him  tea  in 
a  room  that  might  have  been  a  London  drawing- 
room,  he  saw  that  he  was  right.  Mrs.  Shenstone  was 
not  glaringly  vulgar,  nor  markedly  solicitous  as  to  the 
things  which  make  people  snobs ;  she  was  only  openly 
attached  to  certain  artificialities  that  most  people  like 
to  take  in  a  more  disguised  form. 

When  Stephen  arrived  his  hostess  was  in  a  tur- 
quoise-blue tea-gown,  and  was  talking  to  Trix  about 
manicuring.  Outside,  the  glory  of  the  evening  was 
shining  on  golden  trees  and  purple  hillsides.  Trix, 
occasionally  answering  "yes"  or  "of  course"  or 
"exactly"  in  fairly  appropriate  places  while  her 
eyes  were  drinking  in  what  she  could  see  outside, 
had  been  sitting  in  the  window  until  Stephen  was 
announced.  She  was  dressed  in  a  plain  black 
skirt  and  a  white  flannel  shirt.  As  soon  as  he  had 
greeted  Mrs.  Shenstone,  Trix  came  towards  him  and 
then  sat  down  in  a  deep  chair  near  the  tea-table. 
Something  rose  in  his  throat  as  he  watched  her, 
she  was  so  slight  and  delicate ;  she  lay  back  as  if  she 
were  tired,  and  her  small,  white  hand  rested  on  the 
head  of  a  spaniel  that  was  curled  up  on  a  cushion 
close  to  her. 

He  hardly  got  a  word  with  her  that  evening.  When 
the  room  filled  up  with  large  sportsmen  and  two  other 
ladies,  in  the  latest  thing  in  garments  specially  de- 
signed for  the  Highlands,  Trix  slipped  away.  At 
dinner  he  was  far  from  her,  but  it  seemed  to  him  that 
she  barely  spoke  to  her  neighbours,  and  when  the  men 
came  out  of  the  dining-room  she  had  already  gone  to 
bed. 

"I  don't  try  to  keep  her,"  said  Mrs.  Shenstone; 
"she  is  not  very  well,  and  has  never  been  up  late  at 


252  Horace    BlaKe 

night.    I  am  not  going  to  oblige  her  to  be  a  grown-up 
young  lady  here." 

"The  morning  and  the  evening  surely  make  one 
day." 

Stephen  was  sitting  on  one  lump  of  granite  on  a 
sharp  descent  of  the  hillside  a  few  feet  from  Trix, 
seated  on  another.  He  had  been  telling  Trix  about 
her  father's  childhood,  and  she  held  in  her  hand  the 
letter  in  which  her  grandmother  had  written  of  him  as 
so  angelic  and  so  deliciously  and  exquisitely  naughty. 

Trix's  eyes  were  soft  and  large  as  she  lifted  her  head 
to  glance  at  Stephen.  The  passion  of  the  past  was 
strong  in  her  just  then,  and  aided  by  Stephen  she 
was  living  in  that  childhood  only  unlike  some  other 
childhoods  by  the  simplicity  of  its  setting. 

"How  delicious  those  two  children  must  have 
been,"  cried  Trix.  "How  I  wish  I  could  have  seen 
them." 

Then  Stephen  brought  out  of  a  carefully-guarded 
pocket-book  a  little  water-colour  sketch  of  the  two 
children,  Horace  and  Mary,  sitting  on  a  low  rock  by 
the  sea.  It  was  quite  amateur  in  quality  but  not 
altogether  weak,  and  it  had  a  certain  truthfulness 
which  is  rare  without  more  advanced  workmanship. 
The  colour  was  light  and  fresh,  and  the  sea-breezes 
not  badly  indicated  by  the  disorder  of  the  gold  and 
brown  locks  of  the  boy  and  girl. 

"One  can  see  that  it  is  father,"  said  Trix. 

They  were  silent  for  a  moment  as  they  sat  looking 
down  into  the  loch  very  far  below  them,  where  some 
water-fowl  were  splashing  the  water  gently  as  a  happy 
accompaniment  to  the  sweet  silence  about  them. 

"The  morning  and  the  evening  surely  make  one 


Horace    DlaKe  253 

day.  That  is  the  note  I  wish  to  strike, "  Stephen  said, 
and  it  pleased  her  very  much.  "  In  the  drawing  he  is 
little  more  than  a  baby,  but  now  look  at  this  poor  sort 
of  photograph.  Are  not  the  eyes  speaking?  Oh!  I 
am  sorry  " — for  the  expression  in  the  eyes  had  brought 
to  Trix's  own  a  few  clear,  large  tears. 

"  No,  no, "  she  said.    "  I  love  to  look  at  it. " 

"  I  shall  construct  my  biography,  as  far  as  I  can  see 
it  now,  on  that  thread.  The  idea  of  a  very  gifted  and 
spiritual  nature  starting  in  the  light  of  happiness  and 
common  human  goodness,  then  the  fight  with  the 
world's  shams,  and  then  peace  in  the  evening.  I 
know,"  he  went  on,  "that  many  people  will  take  his 
life  at  once  from  a  different  point  of  view  altogether. " 

Trix's  head  gave  a  sad  and  experienced  nod  of 
acquiescence. 

"It  will  seem  to  them,"  said  Stephen,  "that  he 
began  in  the  midst  of  silly  and  objectionable  supersti- 
tions from  which  he  escaped  to  play  the  man,  and  that 
in  sickness  and  weakness  he  was  caught  again  by  the 
priests  from  whom  he  had  escaped. " 

"That  will  be  mother's  view,"  said  Trix  in  a  very 
low  voice  and  a  rather  bitter  accent.  A  dark  shadow 
clouded  her  face. 

"But  we  know  better,"  said  Stephen,  "and,  after 
all,  she  only  wants  to  have  the  truth." 

"She  thinks  she  only  wants  the  truth,"  Trix  an- 
swered. 

"You  see,"  said  Stephen,  "my  view  is  a  far  clearer 
one,  and  it  explains  so  much  that  cannot  be  explained 
in  any  other  way  except  by  a  theory  of  brain-collapse 
of  which  there  is  no  proof.  There  is  no  proof  of  that 
except  his  turning  to  religion  in  the  end,  so  they  get 
into  a  vicious  circle;  they  explain  his  religion  by  a 


254  Horace    BlaKe 

brain-collapse,  and  prove  the  brain-collapse  on  the 
score  that  he  took  to  religion. " 

"Exactly,"  cried  Trix  eagerly. 

"Well,  then,  what  I  believe  is  that  he  was  much 
more  consistent  throughout.  He  was  against  shams 
from  the  first,  he  was  bored  by  silly,  superstitious 
devotions  at  school,  he  tilted  against  both  social  and 
religious  and  academical  shams  at  Oxford,  but  I  can't 
see  that  he  ever  tilted  against  a  truly  spiritual  view  of 
religion  throughout.  Then  when  he  was  in  Brittany 
and  in  want  of  help  he  found  the  very  simplest  of  spirit- 
ual men  ready  for  his  needs,  and  in  the  eveningthere  was 
the  same  light  that  had  shone  in  the  early  morning. " 

"He  was  always  going  back  to  his  childhood  in 
those  last  weeks  and  to  his  sister  Mary,"  said  Trix, 
giving  her  corroborating  evidence. 

"  Of  course  it  is  easier  for  you  to  see  it  simply, "  said 
Stephen,  "than  it  would  be  for  Mrs.  Blake,  because  he 
must  have  been  through  some  stormy  times  in  his 
crusade  against  the  shams  of  the  world.  And  I  sup- 
pose that  to  her  his  first  religious  ideas  were  simply 
an  absurdity." 

"I  can  quite  see,"  said  Trix,  "how  she  might  take 
his  attacks  on  the  silly  things  in  religion  as  going  much 
deeper  than  they  really  did.  She  was  brought  up  an 
agnostic." 

"I  won't  ask  you  to  read  the  plays,"  said  Stephen, 
"because  he  did  not  want  you  to  read  them,  but  I 
wish  you  could,  so  that  you  could  tell  me  if  you  agree 
with  me  that  they  don't  in  fact  upset  my  theory.  I 
think  he  was  on  the  side  of  the  real  angels,  and  only 
showing  up  the  false  ones. " 

"But  I  had  better  do  just  what  he  wished,"  said 
Trix  with  a  deep  blush. 


Horace    BlaKe  255 

That  evening  they  were  alone  together  again.  They 
had  escaped  from  the  long,  large  men,  tired  with  deer- 
stalking, who  were  looking  at  the  City  news  in  the 
papers  that  had  arrived  by  the  afternoon  post.  Mrs. 
Shenstone  and  the  two  other  women  were  doing  the 
same. 

"I  wish  I  understood  investments,"  said  Trix  as 
they  walked  off  along  the  garden-path,  "it  is  all 
Greek  to  me." 

"For  Heaven's  sake  don't  let  us  give  it  a  thought, " 
cried  Stephen,  "in  the  very  face  of  these  flowers  too!" 

Much  may  be  done  in  autumn  gardening  in  the 
south,  but  no  art  will  ever  get  the  peculiar  glory  of 
colour  that  can  be  got  in  the  Highlands.  Cardinal 
lobelias,  deepest  blue  salvias,  dahlias,  out  on  their 
own,  wild  and  spoilt  children,  and  travellers'  joy,  that 
was  crept  over  by  the  most  wilful  of  climbers,  the 
flame  nasturtium.  They  had  gone  back,  those  garden 
flowers,  into  more  simple  forms  of  growth  while  they 
glowed  as  no  dainty  greenhouse  beauties  could  glow 
in  comparison. 

"In  England  our  flowers  would  run  to  seed  and  to 
weeds  if  they  tried  to  behave  like  that, "  said  Trix. 

The  loch  lay  before  them,  tapering  away  between 
heather-clad  hills,  and  the  sun  sank  just  to  the  right 
of  a  very  small  ruined  castle,  that  had  but  a  streak  of 
shore  to  divide  its  grim  walls  from  the  shining  water. 

"Are  many  country-house  parties  like  this?"  asked 
Trix,  as  they  walked  through  the  midst  of  the  flowers, 
to  find  an  open  spot  from  which  they  might  watch  the 
sunset. 

"Oh!  I  hope  and  trust  not,"  cried  Stephen. 

"Do  they  enjoy  anything  at  all?"  she  asked. 

"I  think  the  men  enjoy  feeling  better  in  their 


256  Horace    BlaKe 

insides ;  you  see  they  eat  and  drink  so  much  at  home — 
it  is  the  only  pleasure  they  have  time  for." 

"They  can't  eat  and  drink  more  at  home  than  they 
do  here,"  said  Trix,  curling  her  lips. 

"No,  but  they  walk  it  off  here.  Three  of  them 
talked  about  their  pet  doctors  all  the  way  down  the 
moor  to-day." 

"And  the  women  talked  of  their  hats  and  their 
tailors  in  the  boat  on  that  loch,  and  in  such  deadly 
earnest." 

"Well,  never  mind  now,"  said  Stephen,  "let  us 
forget  all  about  them.  I  was  going  to  tell  you  about 
his  time  at  Oxford  when  I  had  to  start  with  them  this 
morning.  I  think  it  was  the  happiest  time  of  his  life. 
You  know  how  miserable  he  had  been  at  school,  and 
then  he  got  tired,  after  a  bit,  of  too  easy  a  life  with  his 
mother.  It  was  at  Oxford  he  began  to  write  seriously, 
but  also  he  continued  his  mock  dramas,  and  really  it 
was  from  the  first  his  writings  that  took  men  more 
than  his  talk.  When  they  knew  how  his  serious  essays 
were  admired  by  the  authorities  there  was  a  special 
gusto  in  reading  the  maddest  plays  in  which  the 
authorities  figured  largely  themselves.  I  wish  I  could 
find  more  of  them,  the  scraps  I  had  are  intensely 
funny,  and  so  exactly  what  would  fascinate  under- 
graduates. He  always  knew  his  audience ;  later  on  he 
knew  how  to  deal  with  the  most  mixed  audiences, 
giving  in  one  sentence  what  would  draw  the  general 
laugh,  with  an  underlying  whisper  for  the  esoteric; 
he  could  say  shibboleth  in  a  breath  with  the  most 
popular  joke." 

Trix  sat  fascinated,  greedily  drinking  in  his  words, 
feeling  at  last  the  full  understanding  and  sympathy 
she  had  never  known  except  in  her  father's  company. 


Horace   BlaKe  257 

And  he  felt  that  every  word  he  spoke  to  her  seemed  to 
have  more  meaning  and  be  of  more  value  than  he 
had  hitherto  supposed  possible  in  his  most  sanguine 
moments.  Then  there  passed  near  them  two  of  the 
long  figures  in  their  shooting-suits. 

"Not  as  good  a  cook  as  she  had  last  year, "  said  one 
of  them.  He  glanced  up  and  saw  Trix  sitting  on  the 
weather-beaten  wooden  bench.  He  showed  as  he 
lifted  his  cap  that  he  had  passed  judgment  on  her 
beauty ;  as  a  man  of  the  world  he  had  condemned  the 
cook  and  he  approved  Trix. 

His  shadow  passed  from  them. 

"Did  n't  you  think  there  was  a  twang  in  that  port 
Shenstone  was  so  proud  of?"  were  the  words  that 
came  from  one  of  the  retreating  figures. 

"  Does  n't  so  much  as  know  there  is  a  sunset, "  said 
Stephen.  Checked  for  a  moment  in  their  talk,  the 
two  looked  out  on  the  great  cloudland  spread  before 
them,  flushed  into  deepest  colour.  Below  and  behind 
the  clouds  was  the  clearest  vision  of  pale  green,  and 
lying  in  it  scraps  of  rose  cast  off  by  the  great  clouds. 
They  all  had  a  majesty  of  form,  the  smallest  of  them 
falling  into  some  mysterious  order  and  humbly  con- 
scious of  the  great  presence  from  which  alone  they 
gained  their  passing  beauty.  They  lay  still  in  the 
heights  of  the  light  of  the  departing  sun,  submissive, 
humble,  dependent. 

Trix,  momentarily  annoyed  by  the  glance  of  the 
heavy  man,  had  quickly  found  her  peace  in  the 
sunset. 

"You  remember  that  other  sunset,"  she  said  at 
last  in  a  low  tone. 

"Do  you  know  what  he  said  to  me  that  evening?" 
asked  Stephen  in  a  voice  that  trembled  a  little. 

17 


258  Horace  BlaKe 

Trix  turned  from  the  peace  before  her  to  look  at  the 
grave,  friendly  face  by  her  side. 

"He  said  that  he  had  not  expected  to  find  a  friend 
at  the  last  station. " 

They  looked  at  each  other  with  unfaltering  eyes. 
If  either  had  faltered  for  a  moment  perhaps  both 
would  have  understood.  The  man  who  condemned 
the  cook  understood,  it  seemed  so  obvious  to  him;  but 
they  did  not  understand  themselves. 


IX 

A   WONDERFUL   WEEK 

GEORGE  SHENSTONE  was  standing  by  his 
wife's  writing-table  receiving  her  commands 
for  their  autumn  arrangements  with  a  slight  frown  on 
his  handsome  face. 

"We  shall  need  a  second  motor, "  she  said,  "because 
you  will  want  one  to  come  home  in  while  I  am  using 
the  other." 

"You  don't  think  of  coming  to  London  before 
January?"  said  Shenstone  in  a  bored  tone. 

"No,"  said  Mrs.  Shenstone  firmly,  "I  am  sure  that 
the  country  is  better  for  me."  She  had  insisted  on 
getting  rid  of  the  Wimbledon  villa  and  taking  a  house 
in  Kent. 

At  that  moment  Stephen  and  Trix  passed  the  window . 

"By  the  way,  did  you  mean  to  throw  that  young 
couple  together?" 

"Why  not?"  said  Mrs.  Shenstone  absently.  "Yes, 
the  second  motor  is  indispensable." 

"What  will  they  live  on?"  inquired  Shenstone 
doggedly. 

"Oh,"  said  Mrs.  Shenstone  cheerfully,  "he  must  be 
making  something  at  the  Bar. " 

"Not  a  farthing;  he  told  me  so  himself." 

"Well,  then,  there  is  his  writing,  and  besides  Trix 
will  have  money." 

"Three  hundred  a  year;  you  told  me  so  the  other 
day!" 

259 


260  Horace   BlaKe 

"They  can  so  easily  live  on  that,"  answered  his 
wife.  "They  have  no  expensive  tastes,  and  they 
won't  want  to  go  into  society.  But  we  must  settle 
about  this  motor,  George. " 

A  slight,  sarcastic  smile  played  on  George's  face. 
He  often  heard  his  wife  advising  young  couples  how 
to  manage  their  little  incomes;  he  wished  sometimes 
they  would  advise  her  as  to  the  management  of  his 
large  one,  but  of  course,  that  would  have  been  im- 
pertinent. He  would  not  tell  her  that  he  did  not  want 
to  have  a  second  motor,  or  that  he  wished  he  could 
stay  in  London  and  not  have  to  run  down  thirty  miles 
every  evening;  so  he  went  on  talking  about  Trix. 

"She  is  a  beautiful  girl,  and  might  do  much  better. 
And  I  don't  think  it  's  quite  fair  to  Mrs.  Blake  to 
make  up  a  match  between  her  and  this  penniless 
young  man." 

"But  I  am  not  making  up  a  match.  What  non- 
sense!" 

"Well,  I  must  go;  the  men  are  waiting." 

"But,  George " 

"Well,  remember  what  I  say;  he  is  not  coming 
fishing,  and  we  all  know  why. " 

After  which  he  walked  out  of  the  room,  and  Mrs. 
Shenstone  soothed  herself  by  explaining  to  the  two 
other  lady  guests  how  easy  it  was  in  these  days  to  live 
on  five  hundred  a  year. 

Stephen  and  Trix  were  not  thinking  of  how  people 
live  or  feed  or  are  clothed  any  more  than  the  lilies  of 
the  field  think  of  these  things.  They  were  in  a  dream 
existence,  in  which  Horace,  their  own  particular 
Horace,  was  growing  daily  more  ideal.  Stephen  had 
brought  with  him  a  small  box  of  papers  which  he  had 


Horace    BlaKe  261 

chosen  as  belonging  to  Horace's  Oxford  life,  and  a 
batch  of  letters  written  home  while  he  was  in  Switzer- 
land just  after  leaving  Oxford.  The  letters  said  that 
in  the  autumn  he  was  to  read  for  the  Bar.  In  Switzer- 
land he  had  met  with  St.  John  Coniston  and  his 
daughters.  To  his  mother  and  Mary  he  wrote  much 
about  the  lakes  and  the  odd  tourists  and  the  Conis- 
tons.  To  an  Oxford  friend  he  wrote  about  St.  John 
Coniston  to  the  exclusion  of  every  other  topic.  Many 
questions  lightly  raised  at  Oxford  had  been  dealt  with 
in  fearfully  sober  earnest  by  St.  John  Coniston  when 
Horace  offered  them  for  his  consideration.  The 
ironic  sense  in  the  older  man  was  much  less  acute  than 
in  the  younger,  but  he  brought  to  the  support  of 
Horace's  sarcasms  against  the  absurdities  of  civilisa- 
tion steady  spade  work  that  mined  much  deeper  than 
Horace  had  wished  or  expected.  St.  John  Coniston 
poured  out,  in  quiet,  even  tones  of  voice,  the  latest 
destructive  criticism  of  his  day,  which  it  seemed  to 
Stephen  was  by  now  out  of  date.  Horace's  imagina- 
tion had  leaped  to  meet  it ;  the  expansion  was  uncom- 
monly rapid.  This  seemed  to  have  been  followed  by  a 
time  of  trouble  somewhat  incoherently  expressed,  in 
which  he  had  written  letters  to  a  priest  he  had  known 
in  Oxford.  The  letters  were  in  parts  impertinent  in 
tone,  which  impertinence  seemed  to  have  made  the 
priest  angry.  He  did  not  seem  to  have  seen  through 
the  flippancy,  the  suffering  it  was  half  meant  to 
conceal.  Was  there  really,  after  all,  so  little  to  be  said 
for  Christianity?  Why  had  he  not  been  told  at  least 
something  of  the  difficulties  when  he  was  growing  up? 
Then  jokes  followed  and  absurd  stories  of  the  teaching 
he  had  had  at  school.  Underneath  it  all  was  the  cry 
for  help  as  the  ideals  and  the  spiritual  sustenance  of 


262  Horace    BlaKe 

his  youth  became  unreal  to  his  imagination.  Presently 
the  letters  to  the  priest  ceased ;  the  letters  home  were 
reticent,  but  happy.  One  letter  to  his  sister  told  the 
climax;  he  was  engaged  to  Kate  Coniston. 

Stephen  and  Trix  understood  imperfectly  what  had 
passed  in  Horace  under  the  influence  of  St.  John 
Coniston.  They  dimly  felt  a  great  change  in  the 
intellectual  tone.  Perhaps  with  some  unconscious 
sympathy  they  turned  eagerly  from  the  sadder  letters 
to  those  showing  the  history  that  culminated  in 
Horace's  marriage.  He  was  at  that  moment,  at  least, 
intensely  happy.  For  the  time  he  saw  all  things  from 
a  Coniston  point  of  view ;  he  was  merged  in  the  family 
life,  and  evidently  the  centre  of  its  admiration  and 
pride.  Kate  had  sent  Stephen  some  letters  from  St. 
John  Coniston  to  his  friends,  speaking  of  Horace  as 
the  young  man  of  the  greatest  promise  he  had  ever 
known;  prophesying  a  great  future  for  him.  The 
Conistons  in  their  dignified,  austere  fashion  had  lost 
their  heads  with  the  excitement  of  discovering  Horace. 
Trix  read  the  letters  with  a  glow  of  colour  on  her 
cheeks. 

Stephen  from  hour  to  hour  made  new  discoveries  in 
the  packets  he  had  brought. 

"Not  content  with  sitting  in  her  pocket,"  said  one 
of  the  guests  to  George  Shenstone,  "he  is  always 
writing  her  letters  and  giving  them  to  her  when  he  does 
not  think  we  are  watching." 

"They  are  her  grandfather's  letters  about  her 
father, "  George  Shenstone  explained. 

"Grandmother!"  was  the  only  answer  vouchsafed 
by  the  first  speaker:  and  perhaps  that  was  natural. 

"So  the  young  man  is  leaving  to-morrow;  and  is 


Horace   BlaKe  263 

going  off  to  see  the  young  lady's  mama?"  he  said  to 
his  host  two  days  later. 

Trix  and  Stephen  were  extremely  business-like  on 
the  last  day  they  had  together. 

41  It  is  better  that  I  should  see  Mrs.  Blake  before  you 
get  back.  I  can't  believe  she  will  really  make  any 
difficulty  about  my  using  the  paper  you  have  written. 
It  is  the  best  thing  I  could  possibly  have.  I  shall  try 
to  write  up  to  it.  Oh,  no!  it  's  impossible  that  she 
should  not  appreciate  it." 

"I  'm  so  glad  I  shall  not  be  there,"  cried  Trix;  "I 
can't  tell  you  how  I  should  dread  it. " 

They  were  silent  as  they  paced  up  and  down  by  the 
water's  edge.  The  boat  that  was  to  take  him  down 
the  loch  to  join  the  steamer  beyond  was  waiting  at 
the  tiny  pier. 

Stephen  looked  round  him  with  a  full  heart. 

"  It  is  going  to  rain, "  he  said. 

"Yes,  the  weather  is  breaking,"  said  Trix  mourn- 
fully. 

"But  we  have  had  a  most  wonderful  week,"  cried 
Stephen. 

Then  a  man  appeared  carrying  Stephen's  luggage, 
and  Mrs.  Shenstone  stood  at  the  front  door  to  say 
"good-bye." 


X 

THE   WORLD   WOULD   LAUGH 

A  DDED  to  the  deeper  and  more  complicated 
J\.  suffering,  Kate  felt  the  intellectual  loss  of 
Horace  almost  incessantly;  she  had  lived  a  keen, 
intellectual  life  in  his  company,  and  now  there  was 
nothing  interesting  said  to  her  by  anybody.  Her 
greatest  preoccupation  was  the  biography,  and  her 
nearest  approach  to  excitement  was  the  unsettled 
question  of  the  publication  of  the  last  play. 

She  had  looked  forward  to  Stephen's  coming,  but  in 
twenty-four  hours  he  had  caused  her  more  acute  pain 
than  she  had  ever  thought  would  be  her  lot  again. 
She  had  been  prepared  to  say  much  to  him  about  the 
beginnings  of  her  husband's  literary  life;  about  the 
first  play  he  produced  on  the  stage,  and  how  it  had 
been  brought  out  in  a  great  provincial  town.  She 
could  give  the  full  history  of  the  dawning  of  his 
genius  on  the  world. 

And  then,  sitting  in  the  tiny  study  in  Anne's  cot- 
tage, this  monstrous  absurdity  of  Stephen's  view  of 
the  biography  was  explained  to  her  quite  as  a  matter 
of  course ;  and  as  a  climax  he  calmly  told  her  that  there 
was  a  whole  chapter  of  Trix's  own  writing  that  was  to 
be  included.  Stephen  inspired  by  Trix!  The  gross 
absurdity  of  that  child  teaching  this  young  man  how 
to  write  Horace  Blake's  Life  almost  made  her  laugh ! 
But  the  saddest  thing  of  all,  what  hurt  her  most,  was 
the  idea  of  this  sketch  of  the  last  weeks  of  her  hus- 

264 


Horace    BlaKe  265 

band's  life,  the  weeks  during  which  she  had  been  kept 
at  a  distance,  the  weeks  during  which  he  had  sunk 
under  the  influence  of  the  old  superstitions  from  which 
she  had  helped  to  free  him  in  his  youth.  She  knew 
that  Trix  had  fallen  under  the  same  influences;  she 
could  imagine  the  flow  of  pietistic  gush  over  the  very 
things  that  were  most  painful  to  herself,  and  she 
knew,  too,  how  ridiculous  it  would  appear  to  her  own 
world  to  have  such  a  chapter  published  as  the  conclud- 
ing account  of  Horace  Blake.  It  would  rejoice  the 
sort  of  sectarian  papers  that  were  already  inclined  to 
boast  that  he  had  made  a  Christian  end.  Kate  tried 
to  control  herself;  she  was  very  anxious  not  to  say  or 
do  anything  that  could  be  unnecessarily  painful  to 
Trix.  But  the  overmastering  desire  at  the  moment 
was  to  crush  this  monstrous  absurdity  before  it  could 
go  any  further.  She  felt  for  the  first  time  how  very 
rashly  she  had  acted  in  giving  the  work  to  this  young 
man  at  all.  "Too  late  to  think  of  getting  out  of  the 
agreement  now,"  was  her  despairing  reflection,  as 
Stephen  went  glibly  on,  misled  by  the  calmness  of  her 
attitude. 

"Mr.  Tempest,"  she  said  at  last,  "I  am  very  sorry; 
you  and  Trix  have  wasted  a  great  deal  of  time." 

Stephen  thus  pulled  up  short,  suddenly  realised  how 
very  badly  he  had  started  on  his  explanations. 

"I  cannot  imagine  why  Trix  did  not  tell  me  what 
she  was  doing.  I  feel  very  sorry  about  it.  It  was 
probably  a  comfort  to  her  to  write  it,  but  if  I  had 
known  I  could  have  warned  her  that  it  could  never  be 
part  of  the  biography.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  read 
this  paper.  There  is  a  degree  of  suffering  that  I  am 
not  called  upon  to  bear.  You  neither  of  you  know 
what  you  are  talking  about.  You  cannot  possibly 


266  Horace   BlaKe 

judge  at  all  without  reading  all  the  papers.  The 
world  would  simply  laugh  if  you  tried  to  make  him 
out  what  your  fancy  and  Trix's  fancy  have  pro- 
duced." She  paused,  and  then  went  on:  "Ah!  I 
had  hoped  you  would  have  taken  your  work  seriously. 
I  expected  you  to  read  the  whole  of  what  I  could  give 
you  before  you  began  to  make  your  outline  even  in 
your  own  mind.  You  ought  to  see  him  in  his  height 
and  his  breadth  and  even  in  his  depths  before  you 
begin  to  write.  He  was  one  of  the  great  geniuses  of 
the  world,  and  the  little  rules  that  apply  to  other  men 
were  not  meant  for  him.  If  you  try  to  get  a  watery 
nimbus  round  his  head  you  make  him  ridiculous. 
His  dramatic  genius  developed  itself  through  evil  as 
well  as  good.  I  think  he  had  to  know  vice.  That  is 
my  explanation  and  that  is  why  I ...  No,  I  will  not 
be  driven  to  speak  of  myself.  I  have  never  done  that. 
But  I  am  the  only  being  in  the  world  who  knew  him 
through  it  all.  I  don't  mind  if  the  world  calls  him  a 
bad  man  if  he  is  given  his  true  place  as  a  great  one. 
What  does  anybody  know  of  good  or  evil?  He  ex- 
ploited himself,  exhausted  his  nerves  in  the  world's 
service.  He  was  not  born  with  the  moral  sensitiveness 
of  other  men  just  as  they  were  not  born  with  his 
genius." 

The  low  tones  went  over  Stephen's  bowed  head  like 
threatening  thunder.  Once  he  looked  up  and  thought 
that  she  was  terrible  but  great.  Her  voice  had  in  it  a 
volume  of  conviction  that  was  masterful.  Dark  as 
fate  was  the  expression  on  the  large  worn  features. 

"Do  you  want  to  see  him  through  the  diminishing 
glass  of  poor  little  Trix's  fancy?  It  would  be  a  water- 
colour  sketch  in  contrast  to  the  mighty  statue  of  his 
true  self !  I  won't  ask  you  to  give  up  writing  the  Life, 


Horace  BlaKe  267 

Mr.  Tempest,  but  I  must  ask  you  to  put  all  this  out  of 
your  mind.  I  have  two  trunks  of  papers  now  that  you 
have  not  even  glanced  at.  I  can  send  them  to  you  in  a 
few  days.  Approach  them  with  a  free  mind.  And  as 
to  Trix's  sketch,  do  not  speak  to  me  about  it  again. 
Of  course  I  know  there  is  a  glamour  about  the  religion 
that  has  got  hold  of  Trix.  Why,  I  saw  Horace  cast  it 
off  with  pain  and  regret,  but,  good  Heavens!  he  did 
cast  it  off,  and  his  mind  expanded  as  if  he  had  cast  off 
the  most  binding  of  fetters.  That  was  the  liberating 
of  his  genius,  and  now,  because  at  the  end,  when  the 
poison  of  his  disease  reached  his  brain,  he  fell  into  the 
hands  of  those  old  priests,  I  am  to  have  this  preposter- 
ous mistake  drawn  out  and  presented  to  the  world. 
For  all  the  sane  years  of  his  manhood  Horace  hated 
religion.  He  left  us  all  behind  him  in  that.  He  taught 
me  to  loathe  it;  the  words  he  used  about  it  were 
terrible  even  to  me.  I  don't  blame  poor  Trix;  I  did 
not  want  her  to  be  with  him  at  the  end.  It  was  all  too 
much  for  a  young  girl.  I  am  not  in  the  least  surprised, 
but  I  cannot  possibly  allow  her  to  interfere  in  this ;  it 
would  be  to  fail  in  my  duty.  I  must  have  the  truth 
told  about  Horace,  and  that  she  would  not  understand, 
and  I  don't  want  her  to  understand.  I  have  done 
much  in  my  life  that  I  would  not  otherwise  have  done 
to  prevent  her  knowing  the  truth  about  her  father." 

And  as  she  spoke  Stephen  heard  Trix's  voice  that 
was  so  far  more  winning,  saying  of  her  mother: 

"She  thinks  she  only  wants  the  truth." 


XI 

YOU   WERE   ABOUT   ALL   DAY 

KATE  did  not  wait  to  see  what  Stephen  would  say 
to  her.  Having  reached  the  limit  of  her  powers 
of  endurance  she  left  him  and  walked  out  of  the  room 
as  if  she  had  forgotten  his  presence. 

Stephen  felt,  in  spite  of  the  dignity  and  self-control 
she  had  shown,  that  there  had  been  a  scene,  and,  of 
course,  being  a  man,  he  hated  a  scene.  He  went  out 
across  the  garden  and  made  his  way  to  the  common, 
no  doubt  looking  a  little  like  a  schoolboy  who  has 
received  a  scolding  from  the  head  master.  He  was 
sore  and  angry  and  indignant,  but  most  of  all  he  was 
unhappy  at  the  danger  of  losing  Trix's  sketch ;  that  it 
was  already  lost  he  would  not  accept.  To  him  it  was 
as  it  might  be  with  an  artist  who  had  started  his 
picture  with  painting  in  the  eyes,  who  felt  he  had 
caught  the  eyes  truly,  and  then  was  imperiously 
ordered  to  rub  them  out  again !  A  portrait  painter  is 
in  his  rights  if  he  refuses  interference  that  he  knows 
will  spoil  his  work.  And  here  was  Mrs.  Blake  trying 
to  cut  out  this  exquisite  bit  of  work  which  he  knew 
to  be  as  true  as  it  was  lovely,  actuated  by  her  bitter, 
narrow  prejudice  against  religion.  He  wished  he  had 
told  her  nothing  about  it  at  this  early  stage ;  an  artist 
will  not  let  his  first  sketch  be  seen  by  those  who 
cannot  understand  what  is  still  only  a  hint  at  the 
final  conception. 

"Even  if  he  did  some  queer  things  at  one  time," 
268 


Horace    BlaKe  269 

thought  Stephen,  "that  need  not  interfere  with  my 
main  idea.  Besides,  I  've  no  doubt  Blake  pitched  into 
the  shams  of  religion  pretty  hotly  to  Mrs.  Blake,  and 
she  took  the  thing  wholesale.  She  would  not  under- 
stand what  there  was  in  him  that  comes  out  so 
exquisitely  in  Trix's  sketch.  She  prates  of  truthful- 
ness; she  does  not  wish  me  to  hide  his  lapses  (they 
don't  count),  but  because  of  the  Popery  she  wants  me 
to  sacrifice  the  truth  as  to  his  last  weeks."  At  that 
moment  he  could  not  endure  Kate  Blake. 

"Well,"  he  said  to  himself,  "she  shall  find  that  I 
am  going  to  speak  the  truth  or  not  write  the  book  at 
all.  If  I  am  not  to  use  what  Trix  has  written,  and  I 
won't  give  it  up  unless  she  agrees  herself,  I  shall  go  to 
Brittany  and  see  the  cure  and  the  sacristan  and  get  at 
the  truth  for  myself,  but  I  shall  never  be  able  to  give 
it  to  the  world  as  well  as  his  daughter  has  written  it. 
It  needed  hereditary  genius  for  that." 

He  went  back  to  the  cottage  only  just  in  time  to 
dress  for  dinner.  There  was  an  inevitable  stiffness 
during  the  whole  evening,  and  Stephen  was  truly  glad 
that  his  early  departure  next  morning  had  been  fixed 
on  the  day  of  his  arrival.  Kate  was  out  walking  when 
he  came  down  to  breakfast,  and  Anne  gave  him  his 
tea  and  talked  politics  laboriously  while  he  ate  his 
ham. 

"  My  sister  asked  me  to  give  you  this  if  she  was  not 
back  in  time  to  see  you  again. " 

Stephen  opened  the  letter  as  the  fly  took  him  across 
the  common  to  the  station.  Before  he  read  it  he 
looked  back  at  the  cottage.  It  was  low  and  thatched, 
and  late  autumn  creepers  gave  it  deep  hues  of  red  and 
light  hues  of  green  and  yellow.  The  smoke  from  a 
chimney  curled  and  turned  in  a  grey  streak  against 


270  Horace    DlaKe 

the  blue  distance.    It  had  been  Trix's  home,  in  appear- 
ance so  like  many,  many  little  homes  up  and  down  the 
country,  so  unlike  in  reality. 
Then  he  turned  to  the  letter: 

"DEAR  MR.  TEMPEST, 

"I  do  not  feel  equal  to  reopening  the  questions 
we  discussed  yesterday.  I  do  not  want  to  go  into 
things  with  you  now,  that  you  will  see  differently 
when  you  have  mastered  all  the  papers.  Then  I  shall 
not  have  to  ask  you  to  leave  out  Trix's  writing;  you 
will  want  to  leave  it  out  yourself.  In  the  agreement 
we  signed  at  Wimbledon  it  was  stipulated  that  you 
should  only  use  the  material  I  sent  you.  This  paper 
of  Trix's  I  refuse  to  allow  you  to  publish;  you  will 
understand  why  before  long. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"  KATHERINE  BLAKE.  " 

Stephen  was  not  really  impressed  by  this  prophecy. 
Indeed  the  tone  of  the  letter  added  considerably  to 
his  indignation. 

Stephen  was  truly  glad  when  he  found  himself  alone 
in  the  little  flat  that  evening.  He  was  much  pleased 
with  his  new  abode.  It  could  hardly  have  been  higher, 
and  there  was  no  lift.  Solitude  was  emphasised  by 
the  slight  distant  sound  of  traffic  far  below.  Once  a 
day  the  flat  was  visited  by  a  woman  who  "did"  the 
cleaning,  and  whose  whole  person  suggested  a  large 
family  life  out  of  sight.  As  she  did  not  spare  time  to 
look  out  of  the  windows  no  one  but  Stephen  enjoyed 
exactly  the  same  view  as  he  did.  He  had  come  up 
from  Anne  Coniston's  cottage  with  his  mind  irritated 


Horace    BlaKe  271 

and  nervous.  Even  next  day  when  he  tried  to  write 
the  narrative  of  Horace  Blake's  first  connection  with 
St.  John  Coniston,  he  felt  as  a  poet  might  feel  who  is 
expected  to  write  while  angry  voices  in  dispute  reach 
him  from  the  next  room.  Still  the  glorious  solitude 
of  the  inexpensive  heights  where  he  had  taken  up  his 
abode  began  to  soothe  him  exceedingly.  The  rooms 
belonged  to  a  lady  who  lectured  on  literature;  they 
were  austerely  simple  in  effect,  no  glory  of  colour, 
only  dull  greens,  sober  cloth-bound  books  in  white 
shelves,  a  few  photographs  of  great  pictures,  a  few 
exquisite  casts.  They  had,  in  their  moderate  dimen- 
sions, the  sense  of  space  that  is  so  often  lost  in  really 
large  rooms.  Stephen  sat  there  on  his  second  evening 
in  London  leaning  back  in  an  armchair — not  quite  an 
easy-chair — that  held  him  with  a  firm  support,  look- 
ing out  on  the  innumerable  lights  that  spread  as  wide 
below  him  as  stars  could  spread  in  the  firmament. 
The  night  was  cool,  a  touch  of  almost  autumnal  fresh- 
ness put  spirit  into  it.  He  had  had  a  moderate  dinner 
at  a  very  moderate  price  in  a  foreign  restaurant,  and 
then  had  climbed  his  mountain  height.  He  sat  now 
smoking  and  looking,  giving  himself  up  to  sheer  en- 
joyment of  the  sense  of  liberty.  There  was  no  one  he 
knew  in  London  except  probably  Edward  Hales;  the 
obligations  and  claims  of  social  life  were  reduced  to 
a  minimum.  "Alone  sat  freedom  on  the  heights, "  he 
murmured  smiling.  And  then  his  thoughts  turned 
dreamily  to  other  heights  where  he  had  sat  so  lately 
with  Trix.  He  did  not  think  of  Trix  as  an  ideal,  more 
as  a  very  pleasing  and  curious  discovery  of  his  own. 
She  was  so  unlike  other  people.  He  felt  a  little 
responsible  for  her,  and  zealous  about  her  as  if  she 
were  a  cause  and  also  something  he  had  in  charge. 


272  Horace   BlaKe 

The  immense  moment  of  liberty  was  soon  lost  after 
that.  He  had  put  himself  into  bonds  again  that  felt 
at  first  as  sheer  added  pleasure,  but  which  soon 
revived  the  irritation  from  which  he  had  escaped.  He 
turned  on  the  light  a  few  minutes  later  and  wrote  to 
her.  He  tried  to  conceal  his  anger  as  to  what  had 
passed  at  the  cottage,  but  he  left  it  easy  to  understand. 

"It  seemed  so  painful,"  he  concluded,  "that  it 
happened  in  the  house  you  grew  up  in.  I  pictured  you 
to  myself  as  a  child  running  up  and  down  the  little 
stairs  and  picking  flowers  in  the  garden.  You  were 
about  all  day,  and  soothed  me  not  a  little.  I  saw 
through  an  open  door,  a  Breton  benitier.  I  think  that 
must  have  been  your  room,  and  I  remembered  that  he 
gave  you  one  that  he  had  bought  in  the  village.  I 
cannot  tell  you  how  that  took  me  back  to  St.  Jean  des 
Pluies.  I  seemed  to  hear  the  sea  not  far  off.  Don't 
be  troubled  about  your  sketch  of  those  days.  I  was 
very  foolish  to  bring  up  the  matter  before  Mrs.  Blake 
could  see  the  proportions  it  would  take  in  the  book. 
I  am  not  going  to  make  him  a  superstitious  devot.  I 
shall  work  on  until  there  is  something  fit  to  show  her. 
Besides,  she  must  know  that  whether  I  use  your  words 
or  not,  I  must  tell  the  truth  as  to  those  last  weeks. 
She  has  been  naturally  irritated  by  one  of  the  Romish 
papers  boasting  of  Blake  as  a  Catholic  who  was 
educated  by  a  religious  Order,  and  who  made  a  saintly 
end.  Such  rot  ought  not  to  affect  her.  I  hope  you 
will  stay  on  in  the  Highlands ;  you  were  getting  more 
colour  every  day.  It  is  just  as  well  that  you  should  be 
away  a  little  while  longer. " 

He  finished  the  letter,  debated  for  a  moment 
whether  to  go  down  to  the  hall  to  post  it  now,  or  wait 
till  the  morning,  and  then  impulsively  decided  on  a 


Horace    BlaKe  273 

night  walk,  and  leaving  the  flat  came  out  on  to  the 
gloomy  central  staircase. 

As  he  walked  quickly  down  flight  after  flight  of 
stone  stairs  dimly  lighted,  his  thoughts  of  Trix  went 
on.  He  reached  the  bottom  with  a  harder  clang  on 
the  asphalt  floor,  and  had  just  dropped  his  letter  in 
the  hall  post-box  when  he  realised  that  three  men 
were  looking  at  him — the  porter  of  the  mansions  and 
two  railway  men.  He  felt  that  they  were  unjustly 
annoyed  with  him,  and  he  saw  at  a  glance  that  the 
wrong  imputed  to  him  was  the  fact  that  two  evidently 
weighty  packing-cases  bore  his  name.  The  hall- 
porter  moved  away  a  little  as  if  disclaiming  any 
responsibility.  "The  luggage  lift  can't  be  worked 
to-night,"  he  remarked. 

"If  you  '11  take  them  up  now,"  said  Stephen,  "I  '11 
give  you  five  bob  each  and  a  drink  at  the  top. " 

So  they  did  it,  and  left  him,  puffed  but  very  friendly. 
The  two  cases,  untidy,  sinister  objects,  stood  open  in 
the  middle  of  the  sitting-room.  The  men  had  thrown 
in  the  opening  of  the  cases  as  an  act  of  grace  after 
stiffish  glasses  of  whiskey-and-soda.  Stephen  took  out 
armfuls  of  packets  of  letters  and  flung  them  on  the 
writing-table,  on  the  sofa — anywhere  and  everywhere. 
He  began  to  read  them  that  night. 

18 


XII 

HE   GROWS   MORE  AMAZINGLY    VIVID 

CDWARD  HALES  loved  London  at  the  end  of 
C  August.  What  he  disliked  had  left  it,  what  he 
liked  was  still  there.  He  hated  all  the  people  who 
wanted  to  know  where  each  other  went  and  what 
each  other  did.  He  liked  the  people  who  talked  with 
you  and  took  drinks  from  you,  and  very  likely  told 
you  their  sorrows  without  asking  where  you  lived  and 
what  might  be  your  serious  claims  on  their  attention. 
He  was  letting  himself  into  the  little  house  in  St. 
George's  Square,  and  was  actually  turning  the  latch- 
key in  the  lock,  when  he  had  the  unpleasant  impres- 
sion of  an  acquaintance  of  the  former  class  wishing  to 
accost  him.  But  his  frown  changed  as  he  recognised 
Stephen. 

"Ah!  come  in,"  he  growled  heartily. 

Gas  burned  low  in  the  dingy  hall  through  which 
Hales  led  the  way  into  his  sanctum.  He  lighted  half 
a  dozen  candles  while  Stephen  stood  silent  and 
absorbed  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  The  candles  lit 
up  some  rare  engravings  and  finely-bound  books. 

"Are  n't  you  going  to  sit  down?"  growled  Hales. 

Stephen  sat  down,  still  in  silence. 

"Or  to  smoke?"  said  Hales. 

Stephen  mechanically  drew  out  a  cigarette-case  and 
accepted  a  match. 

"Why,  if  you  knew  Blake,  did  n't  you  warn  me?" 
he  asked. 

274 


Horace    BlaKe  275 

"I  like  that, "  said  Hales,  interested  and  amused  by 
the  sudden  attack.  "  I  told  you  not  to  do  it. " 

"But  when " 

"When,"  Hales  interrupted,  "I  found  you  had 
already  bound  yourself  to  do  it  I  gave  you  the  best 
advice  I  could.  I  told  you  to  do  what  Mrs.  Blake 
wanted — to  follow  her  implicitly." 

Stephen  groaned,  but  his  eyes  were  bright  and  keen. 

"I  wish  to  goodness  I'd  never  come  across  the 
Blakes — wife  or  husband,"  he  said  impatiently. 

"What  's  the  matter?"  said  Hales  slowly. 

"The  matter  is,"  said  Stephen,  "that  I  've  been  a 
prodigious  ass.  I  began  the  biography  at  the  be- 
ginning. I  've  written  the  childhood  and  the  youth 
up  to  the  time  he  met  the  Conistons — I  had  plenty  of 
material  for  that — and  then,  you  see,  I  knew  Blake  at 
the  end." 

"When  he  was  dying  in  the  odour  of  sanctity," 
grunted  Hales.  "And  it  was  precisely  all  the  rest  of 
which  you  knew  nothing. " 

"I  know  now,"  said  Stephen. 

"I  wonder  if  you  do, "  said  Hales,  speaking  in  a  low 
voice  to  himself. 

" Do  you  remember, "  said  Stephen,  "a  talk  we  had 
here  about  Puritan  Anne?" 

"Yes,  "said  Hales. 

"Well,  if  I  'd  listened  to  you  then  I  might  have  been 
saved  a  lot.  I  see  it  now.  Do  you  know,  I  've  heaped 
together  all  the  fine  things  Blake  put  in  the  mouths  of 
some  of  his  characters?  They  made  out  a  grand  case 
for  Blake  as  a  reformer  and  as  a  man.  I  gave  him 
credit  for  the  passion,  the  earnestness,  the  self-deny- 
ing zeal  of  Selden,  for  instance — you  remember 
Selden?" 


276  Horace    BlaKe 

"Perfectly, "  said  Hales.  "That  was  simply  part  of 
the  man's  miraculously  true  dramatic  insight  into  the 
characters  he  created." 

"And  those  qualities,"  said  Stephen  bitterly,  "had 
no  existence  whatever  in  Selden's  creator." 

"None  whatever,"  said  Hales  cheerfully. 

"And  he  had  none  of  the  qualities  of  Martindale, 
the  great  judge  in  False  Measures,  either." 

"  None  at  all — not  a  vestige  of  them, "  agreed  Hales. 
"But  mind  you,  Tempest,  he  never  pretended  he  had. 
You  have  been  making  an  anthology  of  the  virtuous 
speeches.  You  have  left  out  the  passages  where  the 
other  characters  sneer  back.  I  told  you  that  Blake's 
evil  mind  trailed  over  it  all.  I  told  you  the  vilest  thing 
in  his  work  was  just  his  use  of  the  best  things ;  no  man 
ever  soiled  the  purest  or  debased  the  noblest  things  as 
Blake  did." 

Hales's  voice  had  risen  higher  than  usual ;  there  was 
in  it  a  rare  touch  of  passion. 

"And  the  way  he  got  his  knowledge, "  said  Stephen, 
"was  to  leave  nothing  sacred." 

"There  must  be  letters  of  extraordinary  interest." 

Stephen  nodded. 

"How  he  kept  them  to  witness  against  him  I  can't 
conceive,"  he  said  after  a  moment's  silence. 

"Oh,  I  can, "  said  Hales,  "I  know  his  methods.  He 
kept  by  him  anything  that  he  could  possibly  use. 
Again  and  again  he  used  his  own  vile  or  mean  ex- 
periences, and  he  rewrote  the  reproaches  of  those 
whom  he  had  injured,  still  keeping  their  most  cutting 
or  touching  words,  wrote  them  up  into  things  that  will 
last  as  long  as  the  language.  Even  I  took  some  grist 
to  his  mill.  I  sent  him  a  play  to  read;  he  used  it, 
changed  it  from  poor  stuff  to  gold  without  taking  the 


Horace    BlaKe  277 

trouble  to  disguise  a  thing  in  it.  My  letter  of  remon- 
strance grew  into  the  dying  playwright's  splendid 
lament  in  Second-rate  Men.  Life,  men,  and  women, 
were  only  rough  material  for  the  next  play.  His  wife 
was  the  only  exception.  She  was  his  comrade,  his 
partner  in  his  pirate's  expedition." 

"There  is  one  letter  I  mind  more  than  all  the  rest, " 
said  Stephen,  "without  date,  or  name,  or  sign  of  where 
it  came  from.  It  is  terribly  beautifully  written,  by  a 
woman  of  an  exquisite  mind,  of  extreme  sensibility,  a 
soul  in  torture.  '  Why  do  you  put  into  this  play  what 
I  cannot  but  feel  to  be,  down  to  the  minutest  detail, 
the  reflection  of  our  own  miserable  story?' 

"  Probably, "  said  Hales,  "he  had  brought  about  the 
miserable  story  simply  in  order  to  write  a  play  about 
it." 

"He  almost  tells  her  so  in  what  is  clearly  his  answer 
which  is  a  panegyric  on  realism  in  art.  It  is  in  essay 
form — conceive!  Here  's  one  sentence." 

Stephen  drew  out  his  notebook,  and  read:  '"All  ex- 
perience has  tenfold  value  to  the  artist,  as  enabling 
him  to  depict  our  strange  world  and  our  strange 
human  nature  as  they  really  are,  and  in  all  their 
varieties .'  B  east ! " 

"Don't  worry,"  said  Hales. 

11  Not  worry  when  I  have  to  write  the  book?"  But 
there  had  been  excitement  as  well  as  nervous  anxiety 
in  Stephen's  manner  all  the  evening. 

"Why  on  earth  has  she  shown  you  all  these  wretched 
papers?" 

"Because  she  wants  a  true  picture.' 

"The  dickens  she  does!"  Hales  stared  at  him  in 
astonishment,  and  then  gave  a  big  guffaw. 

"She  was  very  much  annoyed  at  my  trying  to 


278  Horace    BlaKe 

idealise  him,  and  she  simply  would  not  stand  descrip* 
tions  of  his  last  days. " 

" In  the  odour  of  sanctity ! "  laughed  Hales.  "Well, 
that  would  be  a  bit  too  tall.  How  he  did  hate  religion ! 
I  don't  love  it  myself — but  Blake!  How  do  you 
explain  his  end?" 

Stephen  hesitated.  He  had  not  consciously  faced  it 
yet,  but  the  glib  words  when  they  came  showed  that 
his  thoughts  had  been  on  it  more  than  he  knew. 

"It  was  part  of  the  collapse.  He  was  worn  out  by 
vice,  he  had  gone  to  pieces.  The  priests  played  upon 
his  fears." 

"I  daresay  that  's  true  up  to  a  certain  point,  but 
I  'm  not  sure  it  was  n't  partly  his  devouring  curiosity. 
Perhaps  he  wanted  to  try  a  death-bed  repentance,  and 
if  he  did  it  he  would  do  it  thoroughly.  He  did  every- 
thing on  a  large  scale.  He  always  seemed  to  me  to  be 
a  worse  thing  than  his  own  worst  actions.  My  good- 
ness, Tempest!  It  's  the  chance  of  your  life.  If  Mrs. 
Blake  wants  a  true  picture  give  it  her!  What  a 
subject!" 

Hales  got  up  and  stood  leaning  his  back  against  the 
chimney-piece. 

"What  a  figure  to  put  on  the  canvas  bursting  with 
vitality — even  the  smell  of  the  devil  that  hung  about 
him  makes  for  life.  And  I  fancy  you  've  got  it  in  you 
to  do  it !  I  envy  you,  but  I  could  never  have  done  it. 
Look  at  those  books, "  he  pointed  to  the  shelves  where 
all  the  first  editions  of  Blake's  works  showed  their 
well-worn  backs;  "then  the  materials  you  have  got." 

"I  must  own,"  said  Stephen  quickly,  "that  for  the 
last  three  days  and  nights  I  've  been  obsessed  with 
him;  all  the  time  he  disgusts  me  most,  he  grows  more 
amazingly  vivid.  But  if  you  are  right  and  I  let  myself 


Horace   BlaKe  279 

go  and  paint  the  scoundrel  as  I  see  him  now,  how 
would  she  stand  it?" 

He  was  not  really  thinking  of  the  widow. 

"Mrs.  Blake?  Why  she  must.  It's  her  own 
doing;  she  has  refused  the  idealised  picture,  she  must 
take  the  real  one.  You  have  her  in  the  hollow  of  your 
hand." 

They  were  silent,  but  excited. 

"I  wonder  if  she  has  given  you  everything?  Is 
there  anything  about  Nancy  Potter?" 

"No,"  said  Stephen. 

"Nor  about  the  attempt  on  his  life  by  that  young 
Davis?  He  was  the  original  for  Wedderburn  in  False 
Measures." 

"No,  but  I  've  by  no  means  finished  what  Mrs. 
Blake  has  sent  me." 

"And  all  sorts  of  things  would  not  come  into  the 
letters,"  mused  Hales.  "He  certainly  was  known  to 
cheat  at  cards ;  at  one  time  he  had  a  craze  for  destroy- 
ing the  reputations  of  harmless  people;  his  talk  was 
often  insupportable.  And  then,  too,  there  was  some 
biggish  fraud  he  was  involved  in.  But  she  hushed  it 
up.  I  believe  that  half  the  money  he  made  went  in 
hushing  up  things." 

Hales  sat  down  again,  crossed  his  legs,  and  refilled 
his  pipe. 

"But  you  need  know  no  more  than  she  tells 
you.  Take  my  advice  this  time;  make  a  real  living 
thing  of  him  entirely  from  the  papers  she  gives  you, 
and  then  'ware!  If  she  tries  to  touch  it  afterwards 
you  are  on  strong  ground.  Don't  attend  to  gossip 
— you  've  got  quite  enough  without  it.  Your  place 
in  literature  is  secure,  my  boy.  Don't  be  such  an 
ass  as  to  wish  that  you  had  never  known  the 


280  Horace    BlaKe 

Horace  Blakes — it 's  just  your  amazing  luck!  Bless 
me!  what  a  chance!" 

He  puffed  on  in  a  silence  that  Stephen  was  not 
disposed  to  disturb. 

"I  doubt  if  she  will  interfere  with  you,"  he  said 
presently. 

"She  does  not  mind  his  being  called  a  bad  man  if  he 
is  called  a  great  one,"  said  Stephen. 

"She's  no  fool,"  said  Hales;  "of  course,  he  will 
be  called  both.  I  think  I  am  beginning  to  understand 
her  line  about  it.  If  she  had  an  idealised  biography 
now,  the  '  show-up '  of  his  real  character  must  follow  at 
once.  A  candid,  official  biography  will  prevent  the 
harpies  nosing  about  to  discover  more.  You  can  make 
that  candid  biography  a  fearfully  living  thing.  And 
now,  do  you  know,  I  must  go  to  bed.  You  '11  overlook 
my  weakness  as  it  is  two  o'clock.  There,  listen!" 
Big  Ben  was  faint  but  clear  in  confirming  Hales's 
statement. 

By  a  sudden  revulsion  under  the  influence  of  Hales, 
Stephen,  after  leaving  him,  was  excited,  and  almost 
happy.  His  study  of  the  papers  had  been  truly  a 
sheer  misery.  The  shock  to  his  ideal,  the  loss  of  that 
friend  of  his  hitherto  named  Horace  Blake,  and  the 
horror  above  all  that  this  rotten  being  now  called 
Horace  Blake  was  the  father  of  Trix. 

B'ut  all  the  time  that  he  was  really  suffering  from 
disgust  and  anger  and  shock,  while  he  was  swearing  to 
himself  that  he  would  give  anything  never  to  have 
known  the  Blakes,  there  had  been  a  kind  of  detached 
consciousness  of  the  greatness  of  the  artistic  oppor- 
tunity. Even  while  he  most  sincerely  groaned  to 
Hales  and  blamed  him  for  not  having  prevented  him 


Horace    BlaKe  281 

from  undertaking  the  job,  he  was  wondering  what 
Hales  would  say  of  it  now.  And  then  Hales,  from  the 
moment  he  heard  of  Kate's  attitude,  had  seen  the 
greatness  of  the  opportunity,  and  had  revealed  to 
him  what  was  half  consciously  lying  at  the  back  of  his 
own  thoughts.  With  a  double  force  the  thing  got  hold 
of  Stephen  now,  or,  rather,  Blake  himself  got  hold  of 
him.  Stephen's  artistic  faculties  were  excited  to  exert 
their  utmost  capacities;  they  were  immensely  recep- 
tive. That  night  Blake  overpowered  him ;  his  attitude 
for  the  moment  was  non-moral  in  his  regard;  he 
became  a  spectator,  not  a  judge.  It  was  no  longer 
that  he  had  to  wrench  himself  away  from  the  earlier 
dream.  The  Horace  he  had  imagined  had  clearly 
never  existed.  This  strange  human  reality  was  so 
overpoweringly  interesting.  The  vision  of  the  sunset 
by  the  sea  reflected  in  the  spiritual  look  of  those  great 
light  eyes,  the  fascination  that  had  drawn  Stephen 
into  the  comedy  in  which  Horace  played  the  part  of  a 
sacristan's  saint — Stephen  to-night  regretted  none  of 
it ;  indeed,  how  valuable  it  all  was ;  to  have  been  fasci- 
nated was  an  immense  gain  to  his  biographer.  And 
so,  for  the  moment,  the  image  of  Trix  faded  as  the 
image  of  a  woman  does  fade  when  she  would  be  an 
importunate  interference  in  the  business  of  life. 

Stephen  had  meanwhile  walked  slowly  northwards 
until  he  reached  the  block  of  buildings  that  held  his 
nest — as  it  seemed  to  him,  midway  between  the  "city 
and  the  sky.  Back  in  his  own  room,  leaning  out  of 
the  window  across  the  parapet,  he  had  a  dream  of  the 
great  world  below  him.  So  far  it  had  been  but  a  vast 
inverted  horizon,  where  the  stars  looked  up  instead  of 
down;  to-night  it  seemed  an  infinite  hive  of  human 
beings  full  of  life,  dramatic,  coloured,  intense.  The 


282  Horace   BlaKe 

adjectives  must  be  vague,  because  the  thing  in  his 
mind  was  utterly  vague.  He  was  a  bit  intoxicated; 
he  told  himself  it  was  life,  but  that  was  not  true, 
he  was  intoxicated,  not  by  life,  but  by  his  literary 
sense.  The  great  book  he  was  going  to  write  was  the 
intoxication.  He  saw  London  in  a  Blake  reverie  as 
he  might  have  seen  London  in  a  Hogarth  reverie, 
and  in  the  intoxication  he  was,  as  it  were,  a  little 
god. 

Next  morning  came  a  letter  from  Trix ;  he  opened 
it  almost  impatiently.  At  first  he  half  wondered 
what  she  meant.  By  the  second  sentence,  of 
course,  he  understood.  It  was  her  answer  to  the 
grumble  he  had  written  to  her  after  his  visit  to  her 
mother. 

"  I  am  so  very,  very  sorry  you  should  have  had  this 
trouble  through  me.  Perhaps  if  I  had  written  nothing, 
you  would  have  gone  on  quietly  without  upsetting 
her.  Mother  would  not  let  me  tell  her  anything  about 
the  time  in  Brittany.  I  thought  she  would  want  to 
know  it  all.  I  see  now  how  dreadfully  she  felt  his  hav- 
ing left  her  in  England.  But  we  must  be  true  to  him 
while  we  are  as  kind  to  her  as  possible.  It  won't 
matter  if  you  have  to  give  up  my  words,  you  can  put 
it  all  better  in  your  own.  I  did  wish  I  could  have 
shown  you  the  cottage.  I  suppose  that  no  one  told 
you  which  was  my  own  garden?  Mother  wishes  me 
to  stay  on  here,  and  there  is  nothing  to  go  back  for ; 
nobody  wants  me.  But  I  wish  you  were  still  here; 
no  one  has  noticed  the  flowers,  or  the  lights  on 
the  loch,  or  the  sunsets  yet ;  I  suppose  they  never 
'Will. 


Horace    BlaKe  283 

"Yes,  it  was  my  benitier,  and  he  chose  it;  he  liked 
the  painting  of  the  little  girl  kneeling  at  the  foot  of  the 
cross.     I  hope  you  will  tell  me  how  you  get  on. 
"Yours  most  sincerely, 

"TRIX  BLAKE." 

Poor  child!  Yet  what  could  be  done?  We  all 
feel  a  little  impatience  mixed  with  pity  when  we  see  a 
man  or  a  woman  living  in  a  fool's  paradise.  He  was 
angry  with  himself  for  his  share  in  building  up  her 
delusions.  The  letter  hurt,  and  he  did  not  want  to 
examine  the  hurt.  He  put  it  from  him,  and  turned 
his  whole  attention  to  the  work  before  him. 


XIII 

YOU  ARE   AFRAID 

AT  the  end  of  that  week  Stephen  went  down  to  the 
country;  his  mother  had  made  a  point  of  his 
spending  the  Sunday  with  her  and  his  sisters,  who 
were  staying  with  her  for  a  few  days.  They  all  three 
loved  to  have  him  and  found  him  as  charming  and 
sympathetic  as  ever,  only  he  was  certainly  growing 
very  absent-minded,  and  his  craze  for  exercise  was 
becoming  tiresome  when  it  meant  quite  so  many 
hours'  walking  during  a  too-brief  Sunday.  He  was 
under  the  spell  of  the  Blake  Life — his  thoughts  were 
talking  to  Hales  during  the  morning  service,  and  so 
unconscious  of  the  state  of  his  own  mind  was  he  that 
he  felt  a  pleasant  emotion  as  he  looked  back  at  the 
square,  ivy-grown  tower,  thinking  how  he  had  en- 
joyed the  service,  of  which  he  had  not  taken  in  three 
consecutive  words .  All  day  his  thoughts  took  the  form 
of  addressing  Hales,  because  he  did  not  want  them  to 
talk  to  Trix.  He  was  unconsciously  trying  to  ward  off 
the  feeling  of  pain  caused  by  her  letter,  to  which  he 
did  not  care  to  give  attention.  Some  pain  is  very 
easily  endured  if  it  need  not  be  regarded  seriously, 
for  instance,  as  a  symptom.  Briefly,  it  could  not  be 
disloyal  to  Trix  to  act  truthfully — she  must  some  day 
know  the  whole  or  a  great  part  of  the  whole  thing. 
It  was  clearly  somebody's  business  to  tell  her  before 
long  as  much  as  she  must  inevitably  find  out,  sooner 
or  later. 

284 


Horace    BlaKe  285 

He  had  hoped  to  get  to  London  early  on  Monday 
morning,  but  he  was  kept  by  his  mother,  who  was  in 
need  of  his  help  for  some  business,  and  it  was  impos- 
sible to  refuse  to  do  what  was  wanted.  As  it  was,  she 
evidently  felt  that  he  had  hardly  given  the  matter 
enough  time  or  attention.  He  congratulated  himself 
on  just  catching  the  Scotch  express  for  London  at 
Rugby.  He  had  had  some  sandwiches  and  rejecting 
the  porter's  suggestion  of  the  restaurant-car,  made  his 
way  through  the  corridor  of  a  first-class  carriage  in 
search  of  a  third-class  smoking  compartment.  At 
that  moment  he  was  startled  at  seeing  Trix  leaning 
back  with  her  eyes  shut.  He  half  sprang  back,  and 
then  hurried  forward.  Trix  opened  her  eyes;  she 
flushed  with  pleasure  at  seeing  him. 

"The  Shenstones  are  in  the  restaurant-car,"  she 
explained  in  an  eager  tone.  "I  escaped  after  the  soup 
because  the  carriage  was  so  hot.  How  lucky — or  do 
you  want  luncheon?" 

Perhaps  one  of  the  many  thoughts  in  his  mind  had 
shown  itself  for  the  fraction  of  a  second — the  dread  of 
the  fact  that  they  could,  if  they  chose,  talk  freely.  Then 
came  almost  more  than  his  usual  earnest  friendliness. 

"No,  I  have  had  my  food;  might  I  come  into  your 
carriage?  I  thought  you  were  to  be  another  week  in 
the  Highlands?" 

"We  were,  but  Mr.  Shenstone  was  obliged  to  come 
up  and  Mrs.  Shenstone  began  to  wish  to  see  her 
dressmaker.  I  am  going  home,  and  it  is  so  fortunate 
that  I  should  see  you  first.  I  want  to  talk  about  the 
line  I  had  better  take  with  mother." 

Stephen  groaned.  As  he  sat  himself  down  beside 
her  he  only  wished  to  Heaven  he  knew  what  line  to 
take  with  poor  Trix  herself. 


286  Horace    BlaKe 

"I  think,"  she  went  on,  "that  what  you  said  is  so 
true.  We  must  wait  till  you  have  written  enough  of 
the  book  for  her  to  really  understand  what  you  mean. " 

"Yes, "  said  Stephen,  without  the  least  enthusiasm. 

"The  great  thing  is  to  gain  time,"  Trix  went  on 
with  her  wise  air,  "so  that  you  should  be  able  to  work 
freely.  But  I  do  think — "  She  paused.  Stephen 
seemed  to  be  attending  more  to  the  flat  Midland 
landscape  than  to  her.  He  turned  round  and  suddenly 
the  sense  of  her  loveliness  was  betrayed  in  his  face. 

"  I  do  think,"  she  went  on  eagerly,  "that  I  may  have 
to  settle  at  once  about  my  sketch.  I  mean  that  if 
mother  insists  I  must  consent  to  its  not  being  pub- 
lished in  the  biography. " 

Stephen  felt  that  she  expected  a  vehement  protest 
from  him,  and,  alas!  he  could  not  make  any  protest  at 
all.  This  time  the  look  in  his  eyes  was  not  enough  for 
Trix;  she  felt  the  personal  note,  and  for  the  first 
time  she  stiffened — it  annoyed  her  to  be  made  self- 
conscious. 

Stephen  turned  to  the  view  and  made  a  great 
effort. 

"It  is  horribly  sad,"  he  said,  and  Trix  saw  that  he 
acquiesced  in  the  dropping  of  her  paper. 

"But, "  she  went  on,  anxious  not  to  be  vain  or  self- 
confident  as  to  the  value  of  the  work  he  had  praised 
so  highly;  "you  can  tell  it  all  far  better  in  your  own 
words,  can't  you?" 

Tell  it  all?  Tell  all  the  sweet  child's  ideal  picture 
of  the  last  weeks  of  the  man  whom  the  sacristan  had 
called  a  saint !  He  writhed.  He  could  not  look  at  her 
now,  he  did  not  raise  his  eyes  beyond  one  little  white 
hand  that  held  a  grey  glove.  He  longed  to  break 
through  this  dreadful  embarrassment.  This  longing 


Horace    BlaKe  287 

was  followed  by  a  keen  momentary  temptation,  im- 
mediately resisted,  to  put  her  off  with  soft  words. 

"I  am  afraid,"  he  began  in  a  voice  that  sounded 
ashamed,  "that  I  must  give  up  a  great  deal  of  what  I 
wanted  to  do. 

Then  his  tongue  stumbled.  Trix's  hand  gave  a 
quick  movement;  the  fingers  closed,  she  said  nothing. 

"My  first  plan  won't  work."  He  found  he  could 
not  get  on;  he  produced  a  foolish  little  sentence: 
"You  have  not  read  his  plays. " 

"But  you  had  read  his  plays  long  ago;  I  don't 
understand  what  you  mean.  Why" — she  turned  and 
lifted  a  flat,  green  bag  on  to  her  knees  and  opened  it 
and  took  out  the  letter  he  had  written  to  her  after  his 
visit  to  the  cottage — "  that  was  written  so  very  lately," 
she  said  breathlessly. 

Stephen  took  it  from  her  and  his  anxious,  troubled 
eyes  met  hers.  She  looked  astonished  and  angry  as 
well  as  troubled.  It  was  a  very  sharp  pain  that  shot 
through  Stephen  and  left  him  quite  pale. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  found  out  since  then  that  I  had 
been  on  the  wrong  tack. " 

"Then  you  are  afraid  of  the  truth,  too?"  she  cried, 
and  her  eyes  shot  glances  past  him  at  the  landscape, 
glances  that  had  some  of  the  brilliance  of  her  father's 
when  he  was  angry.  Inwardly  she  was  thinking:  "  It 
is  mother's  doing,  but  how  can  he? — how  can  he?" 

"Then  all  our  talk  in  the  Highlands,"  she  said 
aloud,  "all  you  saw  in  Brittany,  all  you  know  to  be 
true,  is  to  be  suppressed  for  fear  of  helping  the  Church 
of  Rome  in  the  public  mind?" 

"No,  indeed,"  cried  Stephen,  "only — "  He  could 
not  say  to  her,  "Horace  Blake  played  one  last 
comedy  at  the  end,  made  one  final  effort  to  deceive 


288  Horace   BlaKe 

himself  and  you  and  me."  He  saw  in  his  mind  the 
look  that  her  father  used  to  give  to  Trix  as  she  bent 
over  him — the  piteous  glance  of  a  beggar  at  a  minister- 
ing angel.  It  had  surely  been  melodramatic  and 
overdone. 

"Only  what?"  came  in  steely  tones  from  Trix. 

They  were  passing  Hatfield,  and  this  horrible  jour- 
ney would  soon  be  over,  but  he  clung  to  what  was  left. 
When  should  he  be  so  near  to  her  again?  What  could 
he  say?  It  was  intolerable  to  have  to  cut  his  own 
throat  in  this  way  and  not  to  be  able  to  cry  out  even 
at  his  pain.  To  explain  was  impossible  unless  he  told 
her  the  truth.  The  only  way  to  save  himself  was  to 
make  her  suffer,  and  that  he  would  not  do. 

"I  wish  I  could  explain,"  he  cried  from  his  heart. 
"  Oh !  do  believe  me ;  do  try  to  believe  me.  I  have  gone 
through  a  great  deal  before  I  saw  that  our  plan  would 
make  the  world  think  him  ridiculous ;  they  would  only 
say  that  his  illness  had  made  his  brain  fail  him  at  the 
end." 

"You  are  repeating  mother's  words,"  said  Trix 
bitterly.  "Oh,  I  never  thought — "  Her  whole  dis- 
appointment with  him  cried  out  of  the  unfinished 
sentence. 

"But,"  she  said  a  moment  later,  "I  know  what  I 
must  do.  If  no  one  else  will  speak  the  truth,  I  shall. 
Nobody  can  prevent  my  publishing  what  I  choose. 
If  it  is  too  short  for  a  book,  my  paper  can  appear  as  an 
article." 

Stephen  felt  more  dumb  than  ever.  An  insane 
impulse  to  kiss  the  white  hand  that  quivered  in  his 
sight,  to  kneel  down  and  tell  her  that  he  loved  her  and 
her  alone,  and  would  do  anything  in  the  world  she 
could  wish,  was  almost  more  than  he  could  control. 


Horace    BlaKe  289 

"You  won't  say  'yes'  or  'no';  you  are  afraid!"  she 
cried. 

Stephen  had  to  look,  at  her.  She  was  quivering  with 
excitement.  Her  cheeks  were  bright,  her  hair  ruffled, 
her  eyes  glowing  as  he  had  never  seen  them  glow 
before. 

"Trix, "  said  a  tired  voice,  "would  you  give  me  my 
little  bag?" 

Mrs.  Shenstone  was  standing  watching  them. 

"Where  have  you  dropped  from,  Mr.  Tempest?" 

Stephen  shook  hands,  but  found  himself  for  a 
moment  unable  to  explain.  But  at  last  he  conveyed 
to  her  mind  that  he  had  got  into  the  train  at  Rugby 
junction  on  his  way  to  London.  Could  he  be  of  use? 

He  soon  found  that  the  offer  involved  him  deeply 
in  the  multitudinous  possessions  of  Mrs.  Shenstone. 
He  had  to  precede  that  lady  back  to  the  restaurant- 
car;  when  the  train  stopped  he  was  still  in  attendance, 
and  Trix  had  disappeared. 

Stephen  was  greeted  by  George  Shenstone,  and 
then  tacitly  dismissed  by  him  amidst  the  mountains 
of  trunks  that  always  followed  in  the  wake  of  his  wife. 
George  Shenstone  was  always  cross  at  the  station  on 
getting  back  from  Scotland.  Stephen's  own  porter 
had  shouldered  his  portmanteau ;  there  was  no  shadow 
of  an  excuse  for  delay. 
19 


XIV 

ABSOLUTELY  IN  THE  MOON 

'""THOUGH  she  might  not  be  a  good  judge  of  wigs, 
1  Mrs.  Shenstone  was  not  a  bad  judge  of  the  ex- 
pression on  a  face.  She  had  seen  that  a  hot  argument 
was  being  concluded  between  Trix  and  Stephen  when 
she  had  looked  into  their  division  of  the  compartment. 
The  child  was  obviously  very  much  upset.  Whatever 
had  gone  wrong  between  them  had  evidently  in  Trix's 
eyes  gone  very  wrong  indeed.  She  seemed  dazed 
when  they  parted,  too  dazed  to  be  able  to  make  her 
thanks  for  all  Mrs.  Shenstone's  kindness,  but  it  was 
an  omission  that  was  readily  forgiven  in  view  of  the 
droop  of  the  young  lips  and  the  despairing  expression 
of  the  brown  eyes.  Mrs.  Shenstone  could  almost  have 
envied  the  keenness  of  her  feelings — it  was  so  young 
to  feel  like  that. 

During  the  remaining  hour's  journey  alone  on  her 
way  home  Trix  sat  back  staring  at  the  fields  and 
hedgerows  and  cottages  with  unseeing  eyes  which 
sometimes  filled  with  tears  that  were  brushed  im- 
patiently away.  She  had  just  quarrelled  with  her 
only  friend,  and  in  doing  so  she  had  made  the  dis- 
covery that  to  quarrel  with  him  was  to  suffer  terribly 
herself.  She  was  angry  with  Stephen,  angry  at  his 
weakness,  angry  at  his  being  able  to  change  so  quickly, 
so  easily  under  her  mother's  influence.  But  of  course 
she  was  much  more  angry  with  her  mother  than 
with  Stephen.  Alternating  with  these  thoughts  and 

290 


Horace   BlaKe  291 

gradually  taking  a  larger  part  in  her  attention  were  the 
memories  that  crowded  in  on  her  of  her  friendship 
with  Stephen  from  the  first,  the  friendship  that  she 
had  just  done  her  best  to  destroy. 

"I  was  annoyed  at  mother  sending  him  to  see  us, 
but  then  I  liked  him  almost  a^  once.  He  was  so  gentle 
and  considerate  with  father,  and  very,  very  sympa- 
thetic with  me. "  What  was  the  use  now  that  she  had 
lost  his  friendship,  now  that  he  had  proved  unfaithful 
to  her  father's  memory,  of  adding  to  her  own  pain  by 
going  back  over  it  all?  Which  last  reflection  naturally 
only  made  her  go  over  it  all  again  and  again.  She 
wondered  at  her  own  stupidity;  even  in  the  Highlands, 
even  in  that  week  of  bliss,  she  had  not  known  why  she 
was  blissful.  Had  Mrs.  Shenstone  and  Mr.  Shen- 
stone  and  all  the  party  noticed  anything,  suspected 
anything?  She  decided  that  they  had  not. 

"They  knew  he  was  working  at  father's  Life,  and 
that  would  explain  our  having  so  much  to  say  to  each 
other." 

She  began  to  think  how  much  they  had  talked  of 
besides  her  father's  Life,  and  she  blushed  as  she 
remembered  little  things  now  that  she  had  hardly 
noticed  at  the  time.  It  was  harder  not  to  cry  at  that 
and  she  did  not  want  to  get  back  to  the  cottage  with 
red  eyes. 

Trix  was  met  at  the  station  by  the  gardener  with  the 
pony-carriage.  He  was  a  shy  and  silent  youth,  and 
did  not  do  more  than  greet  Trix  by  touching  his  cap. 
After  they  had  started  and  were  out  on  the  common 
he  told  her  that  Miss  Coniston  was  alone  as  Mrs. 
Blake  was  in  London.  This  was  a  relief,  and  Trix  lay 
back  while  the  pony  trotted  gently  on.  How  intensely 
familiar  and  how  changed  the  common  looked  to  her ! 


292  Horace  BlaKe 

There  were  the  sparse  heather  and  the  close  green  turf 
and  the  luxuriant  blackberry-bushes  crowding  round 
the  hollies,  while  here  and  there  the  white  trunk  of  a 
silver  birch  raised  its  tapering  silver  line  from  among 
the  dark  bushes  below,  until  it  shone  against  the  rosy- 
tinted  blue  of  the  evening  sky.  The  common  was  an 
old  friend  who  soothed  her  even  without  understand- 
ing her  pain. 

Anne  was  not  quite  pleased  with  the  obvious  fact 
that  Trix  was  hardly  conscious  of  her  presence. 
There  was  something  that  might  be  mistaken  for  a 
childish  sense  of  importance  and  superiority  in  her 
mien.  Though  she  was  still  in  black  Mrs.  Shenstone 
and  her  maid  combined  had  taught  her  to  wear  her 
mourning  with  a  difference;  there  was  particularly 
something  in  the  way  in  which  her  hair  was  done  that 
was  unfamiliar  and  unattractive  to  her  aunt.  Trix 
came  to  their  supper  looking  very  white  and  holding 
her  head  a  little  defiantly  like  a  child  who  wishes 
to  prove  that  she  is  not  sleepy.  She  was  still  only 
dimly  conscious  of  Anne's  presence,  but  also  dimly 
wished  to  look  as  if  nothing  were  wrong. 

They  hardly  spoke  during  supper.  After  coffee  Trix 
came  sufficiently  out  of  the  drama  of  her  own  feelings 
to  begin  to  wish  to  gather  some  information.  Anne 
was  bending  over  an  embroidery-frame.  Trix's  fingers 
were  fidgeting  with  a  ball  of  wool. 

"Is  mother  staying  on  in  London?" 

"  I  don't  know  how  long  she  may  be  kept,  but  I  hope 
she  may  get  back  to-morrow. " 

Then,  with  an  effort : 

"The  garden  looks  beautiful,  Aunt  Anne,  even  after 
the  garden  in  the  Highlands." 

Trix  did  not  notice  that  Anne's  face  softened, 


Horace    BlaKe  293 

because  she  had  not  noticed  the  previous  stiffness. 
She  was  wondering  how  to  bring  in  Stephen's  name, 
and  she  blushed  as  she  stirred  the  sugar  in  her  coffee. 

"Mr.  Tempest  wrote  to  me  that  it  was  the  most 
charming  cottage." 

"He  wrote  to  you?"  asked  Anne. 

"Oh,  yes;  he  has  often  written  to  me." 

Trix  was  engrossed  in  the  effort  to  keep  her  cheeks 
cool. 

"How  hot  it  is  down  south,"  she  said,  and  she  got 
up  and  went  to  open  the  little  latticed  window  near 
her. 

"You  don't  mind?"  she  asked  politely. 

"My  dear  child,  as  if  I  ever  minded  fresh  air." 
Anne's  voice  was  a  little  irritable. 

"How  long  did  he  stay  here?" 

" Oh,  Mr.  Tempest?    Only  two  nights. " 

Trix  did  not  dare  to  ask  what  she  wanted  to  know. 
She  wondered  if  Anne  knew  what  had  passed  between 
Stephen  and  her  mother. 

"Had  you  met  him  before?" 

"Yes,  once  at  Wimbledon  for  a  few  minutes." 

"Do  you  like  him?"  asked  Trix,  and  then,  furious 
with  herself,  she  felt  the  colour  growing  in  her  face. 
Anne  did  not  look  up. 

"I  thought  him  rather  ordinary." 

"  Mother  likes  him, "  cried  Trix. 

"I  don't  think  she  liked  him  so  much  after  he  came 
here." 

There  was  silence  for  some  minutes.  Trix  was  dying 
to  know  what  had  happened.  Did  not  Aunt  Anne 
know  that  mother  had  got  her  own  way  as  to  the 
biography?  That  Trix's  influence  had  fizzled  out 
altogether? 


294  Horace    BlaKe 

"Have  you  unpacked  yet?"  asked  Anne. 

"No,  I  haven't,"  said  Trix  sharply,  and  jumping 
up  she  dashed  out  of  the  room. 

Anne  Coniston  looked  at  the  retreating  figure  as  if 
the  limits  of  her  patience  had  been  reached.  She  was 
convinced  that  Trix  was  the  root  of  the  difficulty 
between  her  sister  and  Stephen  Tempest.  It  was 
intolerable  that  this  child  should  interfere  with  the 
only  thing  in  the  world  that  mattered  to  Kate,  and 
that  by  a  flirtation  with  the  first  young  man  who  had 
come  within  reach. 

"What  else  could  one  expect  from  Horace  Blake's 
daughter?" 

A  year  ago  Trix  had  given  her  a  good  deal  of  satis- 
faction. Anne  Coniston  was  a  born  educator,  and 
Trix  had  lived  a  quiet,  contented  life.  She  had  been 
fond  of  her  aunt  in  a  matter-of-course  way,  and 
Anne  had  been  far  from  wishing  for  a  deep  affection 
from  Trix  which  she  could  not  conceivably  return. 
Anne  did  not  take  to  grown-up  girls ;  she  liked  pupils 
and  Trix  had  suddenly  thrown  off  all  pupilage. 

Anne  presently  put  away  the  embroidery-frame 
and  stood  looking  out  into  the  dark;  overhead  Trix 
moving  her  trunk  noisily. 

"I  do  think  that  Kate  ought  to  be  free  now.  I 
thought  we  could  go  abroad  and  see  something  and 
do  something  together,  but  we  can't  do  anything  as 
long  as  Trix  gives  so  much  trouble. " 

Trix,  between  temper  and  anxiety  and  the  un- 
manageable new  excitement  that  had  hold  of  her,  lay 
awake  most  of  the  night.  It  seemed  intolerable  not  to 
know  what  had  changed  Stephen,  what  had  made 
him  disloyal  to  her  father's  memory.  He  had  been  in 


Horace  BlaKe  295 

Brittany  with  them,  had  known  her  father  himself, 
and  anyhow  why  could  he  not  trust  her  to  speak  the 
absolute  truth?  Either  he  did  not  trust  her  now,  or 
he  was  willing  to  suppress  what  he  knew  to  be  true; 
there  was  no  other  alternative  to  explain  his  conduct. 
He  had  looked  unhappy,  almost  guilty  to-day,  but 
he  had  not  yielded  when  she  grew  angry.  Her  mother 
must  have  brought  enormous  pressure  to  bear  upon 
him;  perhaps  he  was  not  so  much  to  blame  then, 
but  surely  if  that  were  so  he  might  have  told  her  it 
was  her  mother's  doing  quite  simply,  instead  of  giving 
it  as  his  own  opinion  that  her  sketch  must  not  appear. 
His  conduct  hurt  her  in  a  new  way  now,  and  the  hurt 
growing,  turned  more  and  more  to  anger.  She  felt 
angry  even  at  the  thought  of  the  trouble  on  his  face 
all  that  afternoon. 

"He  need  n't  have  made  me  conscious  of  what  our 
friendship  has  been  to  me,  just  when  he  is  becoming 
disloyal  to  father  and  to  me  too. " 

It  seemed  so  hard  to  lose  his  companionship  in  the 
ideal  world  of  which  her  father  was  the  centre.  One 
thing  was  certain,  she  would  never  be  tempted  to  such 
disloyalty  herself.  She  would  accept  no  compromise, 
however  much  it  hurt  her,  whatever  she  had  to 
sacrifice,  even — even  Stephen's  friendship.  She  would 
be  loyal  at  all  costs.  If  her  mother  and  Stephen  would 
not  do  her  father  justice,  she  would  live  to  honour  his 
memory.  She  might  not  be  able  to  do  much  now 
besides  publishing  that  little  sketch,  but  as  she  grew 
older  and  her  powers  developed  she  would  devote 
herself  to  the  work  of  making  people  understand  what 
her  father  had  been.  Stephen  might  choose  Mrs. 
Blake's  side  and  give  way  to  her  bitter  prejudice 
against  religion,  but  if  so  he  must  give  up  his  friend- 


296  Horace   BlaKe 

ship  with  Trix.  Had  she,  perhaps,  a  subtle,  un- 
acknowledged sense  of  her  own  power  over  Stephen, 
while  she  sat  on  such  heroic  heights  of  self-sacrifice? 
Poor  Trix! 

She  at  last  got  up  and  lit  a  candle,  and  proved  to 
herself  the  reality  of  her  heroic  sentiments  by  writing 
a  few  stiff  lines  to  Stephen  asking  for  the  return  of  her 
MS.  That  done,  she  put  the  letter  for  privacy's  sake 
into  the  handkerchief  sachet  in  her  drawer.  Besides, 
there  was  no  danger  of  its  being  posted  while  it  lay 
there,  and  lie  there  it  did  for  several  days.  After  such 
definite  action  as  that  it  was  easier  to  fall  asleep. 
When  she  came  down  late  next  morning  her  aunt  had 
gone  out,  which  was  a  relief.  Trix  made  herself  fresh 
tea  and  drank  it  with  the  solid  background  of  bread 
and  jam.  Then  she  went  out  on  the  common  in  a 
drizzling  rain  and  a  sighing,  fateful  wind.  As  she 
tramped  on  for  miles  across  the  common  it  grew 
gradually  more  and  more  exciting  to  have  decided 
that  she,  Trix,  aged  eighteen,  had  come  to  the  one 
love  affair  of  her  life,  whether  it  was  to  be  unhappy  or 
not.  Trix  had  never  dreamed  it  would  come  so  soon 
or  be  like  this.  She  did  n't  face  the  question  squarely 
as  to  Stephen's  feelings  towards  herself,  because  if  she 
once  began  to  examine  that  point  she  might  get  too 
near  to  it  and  have  doubts.  So  though  she  told  herself 
that  she  was  very  likely  to  be  going  to  be  very  un- 
happy she  really  had  Stephen's  feelings  towards  her 
in  a  golden  mist  at  the  back  of  her  mind.  She  came 
in  very  wet  and  ravenously  hungry. 

Trix  had  no  idea  of  the  extent  of  the  irritation  she 
had  caused  Aunt  Anne  of  late.  As  long  as  she  did  not 
interfere  and  expect  her  to  keep  all  sorts  of  old  rules, 
she  had  meant  to  be  nice  to  her.  Of  course  she  had 


Horace    BlaKe  297 

been  odious  last  night  about  Stephen,  but  probably 
that  was  mother's  doing.  On  anything  to  do  with  her 
father,  her  mother's  ideas  were  sure  to  be  paramount 
with  Aunt  Anne. 

Sitting  with  her  at  luncheon  Trix  suddenly  began 
to  wonder  if  Aunt  Anne  had  had  any  romance  of  her 
own.  Happily  she  did  not  try  to  raise  the  point  in 
conversation.  They  talked  of  the  garden,  of  the 
scenery  in  the  Highlands,  and  Anne  rather  enjoyed 
Trix's  account  of  Mrs.  Shenstone's  guests  and  their 
appreciation  of  the  glories  of  nature.  Trix  had  been 
late  for  luncheon,  and  there  was  not  much  time  that 
need  be  spent  together.  Afterwards  Trix  fell  sound 
asleep  on  her  bed,  and  did  not  wake  till  supper-time. 
Mrs.  Blake  had  not  arrived — only  a  telegram  to  say 
that  she  could  not  get  away  for  several  days.  Those 
days  were  not  really  deeply  unhappy  for  Trix.  They 
were  like  a  wild  dream  of  open  air,  of  all  sorts  of 
weather,  of  excitement  that  had  not  come  to  a  re- 
action. She  could  not  sit  still  for  long.  She  was  quiet 
in  manner,  but,  as  her  aunt  observed  to  her  one  day, 
"  absolutely  in  the  moon. "  She  felt  and  looked  like  a 
heroine,  which  annoyed  Aunt  Anne  though  it  was 
really  very  harmless.  She  was  only  a  heroine  to  her- 
self, because  she  was  in  love  and  was  ready  to  sacrifice 
that  love  for  higher  ends. 

But  she  woke  one  morning  with  a  sense  of  depres- 
sion. The  excitement  was  going  off,  and  by  breakfast- 
time  she  told  herself  that  she  was  very  miserable.  A 
walk  only  made  her  realise  it  more.  After  all,  what 
had  she  been  so  happy  about?  Was  it  anything  but  a 
one-sided  affair,  and,  if  so,  rather  humiliating  than 
glorious?  What  had  Stephen  ever  said  that  could 
make  her  believe  that — that — in  fact —  She  cov- 


298  Horace    BlaKe 

ered  her  cheeks  with  her  hands  and  felt  very  tired. 
She  dragged  herself  home,  hardly  pretended  to  eat 
at  luncheon,  and  sat  down  wearily  to  an  old  novel  in 
the  afternoon.  It  is  trying  to  live  on  internal  excite- 
ment with  no  external  happenings.  She  was  longing 
for  something  to  happen,  she  wanted  to  begin  being 
heroic  or  to  begin  being  happy.  The  novel  was  not 
much  use  as  a  distraction,  and  tea  only  made  her  more 
awake.  It  seemed  that  Stephen  took  things  quietly 
enough ;  perhaps  he  had  almost  forgotten  the  existence 
of  her  sketch.  She  had  told  him  that  nobody  could 
prevent  her  from  publishing  it,  and  that  if  it  could 
not  appear  as  a  book  it  should  appear  as  an  article. 
And  yet  he  had  not  returned  it.  It  was  treating  her 
like  a  child.  If  he  did  not  think  she  ought  to  publish 
it,  he  might  have  remonstrated  with  her,  but  to  keep 
the  MS.  quite  coolly  without  apology  or  explanation 
was  intolerable.  Her  thoughts  were  interrupted  by 
the  parlour-maid,  who,  appearing  in  the  open  door- 
way, asked  if  there  were  any  letters  for  post  as  the 
gardener  was  leaving  early  to  take  the  pony  to  be 
shod  in  the  village. 

Trix  jumped  up. 

"Yes,  I  have  a  letter,"  she  said,  "I'll  fetch  it. 
Have  you  got  a  stamp?" 

The  letter,  written  in  the  wakeful  heroic  hours,  was 
snatched  out  of  the  sachet  in  which  it  had  been  hidden. 
It  was  not  glanced  at  again,  and  it  was  soon  in  the 
gardener's  pocket  on  its  way  to  the  post-office. 


XV 

SHE   WAS   HIS   LAST   CONQUEST 

OTEPHEN  had  taken  one  last  look  round  the 
O  station  vainly  seeking  for  Trix,  who  had  been 
hurried  off  to  a  farther  platform  to  catch  her  train  for 
home.  The  impossibility  of  saying  "good-bye"  made 
him  feel  absurdly  as  if  he  had  lost  her  for  good  and 
all. 

"My  God!"  he  muttered,  frowning  gloomily  out  of 
the  window  of  the  taxi.  It  was  astonishing  to  himself 
how  much  he  minded.  He  had  thought  so  coolly  of 
the  difficulties  there  might  be  with  regard  to  Trix  and 
the  Life;  and  then  he  had  met  her;  he  had  made  her 
angry ;  he  had  not  been  able  to  say  "good-bye "  to  her ; 
and  the  whole  castle  in  the  air,  the  great  Life  of  Blake, 
the  biography  that  would  take  the  name  of  Tempest 
with  that  of  Blake  down  the  ages,  or,  anyhow,  up  into 
the  best  book-shelves — the  whole  thing  lay  a  mass  of 
rubbish  at  his  feet.  "Absurd,  ridiculous,"  he  might 
say  later  on.  Just  now  he  could  see  nothing  ridiculous 
in  the  obvious  fact  that  nothing  mattered  except  Trix. 
She  seemed  to  be  sitting  opposite  to  him,  the  angry, 
beautiful,  suffering  little  face  refusing  to  look  at  him, 
the  slight  figure  quivering  with  wrath,  one  foot  kicking 
nervously  in  front  of  her. 

He  got  home,  climbed  up  the  heights,  paying  no 
attention  to  something  the  porter  told  him,  and  found 
himself  in  his  room.  The  room  seemed  to  him  bare, 
dusty,  unendurable.  He  hated  the  vast  outlook  on 

299 


300  Horace   BlaKe 

the  great  emptiness  beyond,  the  endless,  endless  roofs 
below  him.  Most  he  hated  the  bureau  and  the  chest 
of  drawers  and  the  cupboard  in  the  wall  and  one  small 
unopened  packing-case  all  of  which  were  quite  full 
with  materials  for  Blake's  Life.  He  soon  got  away 
downstairs,  and  then  he  walked  and  walked.  He  was 
frantic  at  the  position  he  had  got  into.  From  the 
moment  he  had  seen  Trix  he  had  felt  that  he  was  a 
traitor,  and  now  he  vowed  to  be  loyal  with  an  in- 
coherence that  ignored  all  facts.  He  was  still  in  a 
state  of  excitement  that  he  dimly  felt  to  be  intolerable 
when  he  dined  in  an  upper  room  at  a  restaurant  in 
Soho.  As  he  came  down  the  narrow  stair,  escorted 
by  the  parting  bow  of  the  well-tipped  waiter,  to  his 
great  disgust  he  saw  Edward  Hales  getting  into  his 
coat  by  the  revolving  glass  door  leading  into  the 
street.  He  stopped  and  wondered  if  it  were  too 
late  to  go  up  again  and  lie  hid  for  a  few  minutes. 
But  a  waiter  coming  to  push  Hales  farther  into 
his  worn  coat,  by  the  energy  of  his  ministrations 
turned  the  latter  towards  the  staircase.  The  rough- 
hewn  clever  face  with  its  red  beard  looked  up  at 
Stephen. 

"The  great  biographer, "  he  said  grimly,  nodding  at 
the  young  man.  Hales  took  it  for  granted  that  they 
would  walk  away  together.  Stephen  had  so  per- 
sistently sought  his  society  that  it  never  occurred  to 
him  that  he  could  not  want  to  walk  with  him  to-night. 
They  passed  down  a  dingy  street,  past  two  eating- 
houses  where  raw  meat  sat  on  plates  in  the  window, 
adding  its  allurement  to  that  of  oysters  and  large 
cauliflowers.  Stephen  could  not  speak.  Hales  did 
not  until  they  had  walked  some  way  on. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "how  are  you  getting  on?" 


Horace    BlaKe  301 

"I  'm  not  getting  on  at  all,"  grumbled  Stephen. 
"I  've  been  down  to  the  country  for  the  week-end. " 

"  I  love  this  part  of  London, "  said  Hales.  "  People 
here  love  good  cooking  and  good  music,  and  more  or 
less  say  what  they  mean.  They  are  of  all  tongues  and 
creeds,  and  so  they  always  were.  It  is  the  British 
tradition  of  cosmopolitanism — not  a  mushroom  growth 
like  the  Jews  of  the  Mile  End  Road. " 

Not  an  attempt  at  an  answer.  Hales  began  to 
notice  Stephen.  He  certainly  looked  unlike  his  usual 
self,  the  self  of  the  young  barrister  recently  at  Oxford, 
doing  well  in  the  world;  he  looked  ill,  heavy,  suffering 
— above  all,  angry. 

At  last  he  broke  the  silence. 

"I  'm  not  going  to  write  that  book,"  he  said  in  a 
furious  voice. 

Hales  was  so  exceedingly  disappointed  that  he  took 
the  thing  literally  and  seriously  at  once,  which  was 
undiplomatic.  He  argued  and  he  stormed  without 
waiting  for  an  explanation.  His  erratic  and  irre- 
sponsible imagination  had  caught  on  to  this  idea  of 
the  book  Stephen  could  make  if  he  chose.  Before 
stopping  to  make  out  what  the  new  obstacles  were  he 
chafed  and  swore  at  them.  The  only  good  points  he 
made  that  produced  any  effect  on  Stephen  were  first 
that,  after  all,  he  had  undertaken  to  do  it  and  had  no 
right  to  go  back  upon  it ;  and  secondly,  that  if  he  did 
not  do  it,  it  would  be  given  to  somebody  else  who 
might  make  a  preposterous  thing  of  it — a  windy, 
blustering  caricature,  and  give  away  the  whole  show. 

Stephen  did  not  answer,  hardly  seemed  to  listen  as 
they  walked  on  through  Trafalgar  Square,  past  the 
Abbey  in  the  direction  of  Victoria  Station. 

Hales  at  last  growled  out  that  he  would  take  him  no 


302  Horace   BlaKe 

farther  out  of  his  way,  and  Stephen  stood  stock-still  as 
the  tall  figure  of  the  old  don  disappeared,  striding 
quickly,  and  tapping  the  pavement  with  a  gnarled 
stick  in  an  angry  hand. 

Presently  becoming  conscious  of  his  own  stillness 
Stephen  walked  hastily  away.  He  had  not  intended 
to  tell  Hales  that  he  would  give  up  the  job,  but  he  had 
quite  suddenly  felt  the  need  to  speak  out.  It  would 
be  a  comfort  to  get  settled,  to  clear  this  horrid  thing 
away  that  lay  between  him  and  Trix.  An  hour  later 
he  was  sitting  in  his  dressing-gown  in  the  stiff  easy- 
chair  by  the  wide  window,  looking  out  at  all  London 
twinkling  its  lights  below  him,  and  the  quieter  light  of 
stars  above. 

What  was  Trix  doing?  Sad  lonely  champion  for  her 
ideal,  loyal  and  true  as  steel  in  defence  of  her  father. 
No  one  understood  her,  the  strange  mother  so  unlike 
the  child  with  her  stern  magnetic  face,  weather-worn, 
a  bit  battered,  and  no  wonder;  how  could  she  under- 
stand the  fresh,  young  pain  of  Trix? 

And  did  it  solve  the  difficulty,  take  away  the 
obstacle  for  him  to  throw  up  the  work  and  let  it  be 
given  to  somebody  else?  Would  that  draw  Trix  to 
him,  bring  them  together?  Would  it  save  her  suffer- 
ing if  the  job  were  given  to  somebody  she  did  n't 
know,  and  who  would  care  nothing  about  her?  He 
could  imagine  Mrs.  Blake  and  some  literary  hireling 
making  the  book  if  he  refused  to  write  it.  Trix  then — 
he  squirmed  at  the  thought — would  break  off  by 
herself  and  publish  the  poor  pitiful  sketch  with  its 
pathetic  simplicity — the  simplicity  of  genius,  a  thing 
that  might  seem  childish  and  absurd  to  the  coarse, 
rough  world.  No,  that  must  not  be ;  he  must  stop  that 
— in  short,  whatever  else  he  did  he  could  not  really  cut 


Horace    BlaKe  303 

himself  out  of  the  "affaire  Blake"  now.  But  in  a 
moment  he  told  himself  that  neither  could  he  write 
the  book  he  and  Hales  had  looked  to  his  writing.  In 
short,  he  would  and  he  would  n't  give  it  up;  he  could 
and  he  could  n't  write  it ;  and  he  was  very  angry  and 
very  miserable.  His  brain  was  distracted  and  his 
heart  was  aching.  He  had  never  known  such  con- 
fusion of  thought  and  such  painful,  hungry  misery 
before. 

It  was  long  before  he  got  to  sleep,  and  he  woke  to 
his  trouble  as  instantly  as  if  sleep  had  only  prevented 
him  from  finishing  a  sentence  in  his  thoughts.  He  got 
up,  put  on  his  dressing-gown  and  went  back  to  the 
sitting-room  to  sit  in  the  same  chair  and  give  himself 
again  to  trying  to  see  some  solution  clearly  whether  he 
liked  that  solution  or  not.  It  was  seven  o'clock,  and 
it  took  him  until  past  eight  to  understand  the  com- 
plete futility  of  his  discourse  with  himself.  He 
dressed  and  went  out,  having  in  view  a  swimming 
bath,  a  coffee-shop,  and  then  a  walk  of  many  miles  in 
the  Hampstead  Heath  direction.  He  would  be  tired 
if  he  could  be  nothing  else. 

Stephen  certainly  felt  a  little  better,  though  he 
would  have  disdained  to  own  it,  as  he  came  back  to  his 
sitting-room  late  in  the  afternoon.  He  was  tired 
enough  to  walk  slowly  up  the  endless  steps,  and  felt 
more  comfortably  stupid.  He  would  sit  in  the  little 
dining-room  with  its  western  light  where  he  had  no 
room  to  keep  papers.  He  would  not  have  gone  into 
the  sitting-room,  but  he  had  to  fetch  his  pipe.  As  he 
took  it  off  the  shelf  he  knocked  over  the  photograph 
of  Horace  as  a  boy,  and  as  he  put  it  back  it  suddenly 
caught  his  unwilling  attention  with  a  sharp  pain;  his 


304  Horace    BlaKe 

eyss  had  met  just  that  ethereal  glance  with  its  ex- 
quisite claim  on  his  sympathy  that  he  had  seen  in  the 
living  man.  He  opened  a  drawer  and  turned  out 
some  of  the  latest  photographs  taken  in  London. 
Yes,  in  his  new  knowledge,  they  held  a  sinister  inter- 
pretation of  his  whole  character;  the  light  in  the 
eyes  had  become  cruel,  the  lips  were  sensual,  the  mys- 
tery of  evil  was  in  them.  Underneath  the  photographs 
lay  Trix's  contribution  to  the  biography.  He  threw 
the  photographs  in  again  and  banged  the  drawer. 

It  was  not  long  before  Hales  understood.  Stephen 
gave  himself  away  completely.  He  took  Trix's  sketch 
with  him  and  asked  Hales  to  read  it;  then  he  pre- 
tended to  read  a  paper  meanwhile.  Hales  spoke  not 
a  word  till  he  had  finished ;  he  folded  it  up  very  slowly, 
put  it  back  in  its  big  envelope,  and  puffed  at  his  pipe . 

"It  's  a  very  interesting  case  of  heredity.  Is  this 
the  first  thing  she  has  written?" 

"Yes;  she  is  only  just  eighteen. " 

"  It  is  exquisite  work.  She  was  his  last  conquest, " 
said  Hales,  and  he  added  to  himself:  "And  you  are  her 
first. "  The  absolute  proof  to  him  was  Stephen's  un- 
consciousness of  his  self-betrayal;  how  could  he  have 
been  astonishingly  silent  as  to  this  girl  in  all  he  had  told 
him  and  yet  not  expect  Hales  to  put  his  own  inter- 
pretation on  that  silence  now  that  he  had  broken  it? 

"I,  too,  thought  Blake  most  touching,  most  simple, 
most  real.  But  you  see  I  knew  nothing." 

"And  this  child  was  by,  and  you  saw  her  father 
through  her  eyes." 

"Yes;  I  see  now  how  little  those  impressions  count. 
I  took  every  word  and  action  in  the  most  obvious  way. 
He  seemed  peaceful,  but,  of  course,  his  frame  was 


Horace    BlaKe  305 

worn  out ;  and  exhaustion  has  often  been  mistaken  for 
resignation.  Had  I  known  what  I  know  now!  But 
you  see  I  started  with  only  a  dim  notion  of  Blake  as 
a  great  dramatist.  I  knew  nothing  else  about  him 
then  "  He  paused.  "  Damn  him! "  he  added. 

"Yes,  damn  him  for  leaving  this  poor  little  genius 
of  a  daughter  to  find  him  out  after  he  had  enjoyed 
making  her  adore  him!"  Hales  pointed  to  the  big 
envelope  on  the  table.  "That  is  one  of  the  curiosities 
of  literature.  Don't  lose  it,  Tempest.  You  can't 
commit  the  hideous  irony  of  using  it,  but  it  must  not 
be  lost." 

He  noticed  that  Stephen  did  not  make  any  assertion 
now  as  to  not  writing  the  book  at  all. 

"Still,"  Hales  went  on,  "I  should  like  to  know 
exactly  how  far  you  went  with  this  daughter  at  the 
time.  I  suppose  you  took  the  saint  theory  with  a 
grain  of  salt?" 

"Yes,"  said  Stephen,  with  a  sad  smile.  "I  took  it 
as  a  bit  of  pious  rhetoric. " 

"But  you  did  believe  in  the  genuineness  of  the 
religious  side?"  insisted  Hales. 

"Yes,  until  I  read  those  beastly  papers.  Until  then 
it  appeared  to  me  that  Blake's  youth,  although  it  was 
spent  in  a  narrow  intellectual  atmosphere  full  of  super- 
stition, had  in  it  some  of  the  beauty  of  real  religion 
that  is  found  incidentally  in  the  Roman  Church.  The 
home  life  obviously  had  an  atmosphere  of  genuine 
beauty  and  purity.  As  he  grew  up  it  seemed  to  me 
that  the  ripening  of  genius  brought  about  a  vigorous 
revolt  against  all  shams  and  conventionalities,  and 
especially  against  the  superstitions  of  the  religion  in 
which  he  had  been  brought  up.  But  when  his  de- 
structive work  had  gone  far  enough  and  in  his  mature 


306  Horace    BlaKe 

years  there  was  to  be  expected  the  great  recon- 
struction which  should  mark  out  the  inspiring  force 
that  had  succeeded  to  outworn  superstitions,  health 
failed  and  life  was  prematurely  cut  short.  It  was  not 
surprising,  surely,  that  in  this  failing  state  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  peaceful  Breton  village  should  come  upon 
the  fatigued  mind  as  a  soothing  influence.  I  took  for 
granted  that  the  genuine  and  simple  religion  of  the 
people  had  touched  a  chord  in  him  which  had  never 
become  insensible.  Unable  to  effect  the  great  in- 
tellectual reconstruction,  he  took  the  religion  of  the 
spirit — so  I  thought — which  he  detected  in  Brittany, 
and  in  his  weariness  became  tolerant  of  the  attendant 
superstitions  that  perhaps  held  a  lingering  echo  of  his 
childish  days.  From  something  he  said  to  me  when  I 
was  with  him,  I  concluded  that  he  fell  back  on  Des- 
cartes's  view  of  a  morale  par  provision.  Do  you  remem- 
ber that  the  great  French  thinker  held  that,  while  the 
prolonged  quest  for  intellectual  truth  is  going  on,  a 
provisional  guide  for  the  religious  needs  of  daily  life  is 
necessary,  which  can  best  be  found  in  the  current 
creed  of  our  time  and  country.  Such  an  outline  was 
the  view  on  which  I  had  planned  my  Life  of  Blake. 
But  do  I  bore  you?" 

"Go  on,  go  on,"  growled  Hales;  "get  it  all  out  if 
you  can." 

"There  is  not  now,"  Stephen  went  on  with  an 
effort,  "any  profound  difference  in  my  conception  of 
his  early  years.  But  to  those  I  know  now  there  suc- 
ceeded something  very  different  from  the  ennobling 
protest  against  shams,  conventions,  and  superstitions. 
The  thorough  moral  corruption  of  the  nature  which 
followed  lasted  for  at  least  twenty  years.  In  that 
time  there  was  no  great  ethical  aim  or  ethical  ideal; 


Horace    BlaKe  307 

the  only  great  quality  left  was  an  intellectual  rather 
than  a  moral  one.  It  was  the  artist's  instinct  for  de- 
picting truly  things  as  they  are;  it  was  no  burning 
desire  to  make  things  better.  The  moral  nature  was 
wholly  corrupt  before  disease  fell  upon  his  already 
worn-out  constitution.  By  the  time  I  met  Blake  in 
Brittany  the  fire  of  intellect  must  have  been  burning 
low,  as  was  life  itself.  It  was  then  that  the  priests 
worked  upon  him,  while  dreams  of  childhood  returned. 
Delirium  may  bring  back  the  past,  and  yet  that  past, 
now  present,  has  no  longer  any  true  moral  relation  to 
the  living  man.  I  can't  now  see  any  real  beauty  in  the 
end ;  I  can't  believe  that  the  man  was  in  any  true  sense 
himself  at  all.  I  can't  depict  as  a  touching  and  inter- 
esting final  development  of  Blake's  more  spiritual  side 
what  was  little  more  than  the  delusion  of  dotage. 
There  can  have  been  nothing  in  it  but  an  ignoble 
clinging  to  superstitious  rites,  and  a  pose  by  which  he 
sought  to  deceive  himself.  The  serene  atmosphere  of 
a  real  moral  conversion  was  absolutely  impossible  for 
a  man  as  rotten  as  Blake. " 

There  was  a  profound  silence.  The  sympathy 
Hales  felt  for  Stephen  at  that  moment  stirred  him 
much  beyond  his  wont,  and  feeling  always  made  him 
silent.  He  was  immensely  attracted  by  the  girl  who 
had  written  that  paper,  and  he  could  not,  for  the  life 
of  him,  see  any  solution  of  the  difficulty  as  to  Stephen's 
work.  An  idea  that  he  had  once  had  before  with 
regard  to  Blake's  daughter  came  back  to  his  mind  and 
made  the  difficulty  infinitely  greater — an  idea  of 
which  he  had  already  seen  that  Stephen  knew  nothing. 
The  girl,  he  thought  to  himself,  could  not  live  for  ever 
in  her  illusions  as  to  her  father,  but  she  would  hate 
the  man  or  woman  whose  fate  it  was  to  destroy  those 


308  Horace   BlaKe 

illusions.    Therefore  he,  for  one,  could  not  preach  the 
duty  of  truth  to  Stephen  to-night. 

Meanwhile,  it  had  been  on  Stephen's  lips  more  than 
once  to  tell  Hales  of  his  meeting  with  Trix  in  the 
train  and  of  her  wrath  with  himself.  But  he  checked 
himself.  He  was  afraid  of  betraying  the  secret  of  his 
own  feelings —  the. secret  that  he  naively  imagined 
that  he  had  kept  till  now.  He  got  up  to  go  and  Hales 
did  not  attempt  to  keep  him. 


XVI 

I   ENTREAT   YOU   TO  FORGET   IT 

QTEPHEN  put  Trix's  MS.  carefully  away  in  a 
O  little  drawer  to  itself  in  the  bureau  in  the  sitting- 
room.  The  talk  with  Hales  had  been  a  physical  relief ; 
he  was  more  quietly  wretched,  and  fell  asleep  almost  at 
once  when  he  got  to  bed.  Waking  sleepily,  he  only 
gradually  remembered  his  trouble.  Of  course,  even 
if  he  were  to  be  wretched  there  were  consolations.  A 
man  is  not  in  Stephen's  state  of  mind  without  roseate 
visions,  and  sudden  little  oases  would  come  in  the 
midst  of  a  really  painful  aridity.  The  morning  was 
gloriously  fresh,  but  still;  all  the  smoke  from  all  the 
chimneys  rose  as  straight  to  Heaven  as  the  aspirations 
of  saints  or  poets.  He  rather  greedily  caught  at  a 
bright  aspect  of  things,  as  does  a  sick  man  who  in  the 
morning  is  so  tired  of  suffering  that  he  is  determined 
he  will  enjoy  something  or  other  if  so  be  he  is  able. 
He  sang  in  his  bath  and  dressed,  and  was  making  some 
tea  by  the  cheerful  aid  of  a  gas-ring,  when  the  sound 
of  the  postman's  knock  came  pleasantly.  Tempest 
went  to  the  front  door  of  the  flat  and  took  three  letters 
out  of  the  box.  Two  he  flung  on  a  table  near  him 
and  hurried  into  the  sitting-room  to  read  the  third. 

It  consisted  of  three  stiff,  cold  lines  from  Trix, 
asking  him  to  return  the  MS.  she  had  sent  him.  The 
little  note  stung  him  to  the  quick;  he  dropped  it  on 
the  ground,  picked  it  up  and  looked  at  it  again.  He 
had  hardly  understood  the  postscript : 

309 


310  Horace    BlaKe 

"I  think  I  shall  try  the  Northern  Review." 

Trix  seemed  to  have  receded  miles  and  miles  away 
from  him.  "  The  Northern  Review !  Who  had  put  that 
into  her  head?" 

He  went  to  the  bureau  and  pulled  out  the  MS. 
"She  shall  have  it  by  return  of  post  then."  That 
would  just  be  the  end;  she  would  go  her  own  way. 
Little,  independent  Trix  would  act  with  strangers, 
and  provoke  by  herself  a  violent  reaction  against 
Blake  by  publishing  her  lovely  miniature.  There 
must  be  plenty  of  sleeping  dogs  who  would  proceed 
to  wake  up  tired  of  their  own  silence  at  the  time  of 
Blake's  death.  It  was  obvious  to  Stephen,  with  the 
little  room  in  which  he  stood  crammed  with  the  record 
of  a  rotten,  ugly  life,  that  quite  a  number  of  people 
must  know  enough  of  it  to  jeer  at  this  filial  process  of 
canonisation. 

Let  Trix  throw  that  sketch  into  a  magazine  without 
any  dressing  up,  without  a  man-of -the- world's  presen- 
tation of  it,  without  any  acknowledgment  at  all  that 
Blake  had  not  always  been  thus,  and — well!  he  could 
hear  the  roar  of  sardonic  laughter  that  could  not  be 
suppressed.  And  those  who  knew  their  public  would 
present  their  laughter  in  a  literary  form,  and  then ! 

But  very  gradually  another  idea  began  to  dawn 
upon  him.  The  process  of  taking  one's  self  in  is  not 
easily  analysed.  Pictures  growing  more  distinct 
appeared  to  Stephen  of  the  perfectly  gentlemanly 
Life  he  could  write  of  Blake.  Not  the  ideal  Life,  not 
the  Life  he  had  planned  with  Trix,  but  the  friend-of- 
the-family,  man-of -the-world's  book.  The  man-of -the- 
world  book  would  open  with  the  ideal  youth,  and 
then  would  make  a  frank  acknowledgment,  minus  all 
concrete  facts,  that  the  great  dramatist  had  not  been, 


Horace   BlaKe  311 

in  the  stress  of  his  vigorous  life,  what  could  be  called 
a  good  man.  But  it  would  insist  that  he  had  been 
what  was  of  more  consequence  to  the  world — a  very 
great  man.  The  large  bulk  of  the  book  would  be 
taken  up  with  his  dramatic  work,  keeping  skilfully  in 
the  foreground  the  noblest  of  his  creations.  Then, 
returning  to  the  personal  aspect — the  break-up  of  his 
health,  his  courage  in  working  to  the  end  would  be 
dwelt  upon.  The  Breton  atmosphere  would  be  useful, 
the  note  of  simplicity  (which  he  now  forgot  had  so 
annoyed  him  in  the  obituary  notices)  would  be 
pressed  upon,  leading  up  to  the  introduction  of  Trix's 
paper.  The  biographer  would  offer  to  the  public  the 
daughter's  impressions  just  for  what  they  were  worth, 
as  a  conclusion,  gently  suggesting  for  those  who  could 
read  between  the  lines  that  this  was  a  picture  of  the 
end  as  seen  through  the  loving  eyes  of  a  daughter. 
He  was  sure  he  could  catch  the  tone;  nothing  that 
could  be  contradicted,  because  nothing  would  be 
definitely  asserted.  An  unwillingness  would  be  ex- 
pressed to  publish  the  sketch,  but  it  would  be  sug- 
gested that  it  was  impossible  to  suppress  anything  so 
exquisite  and  so  human.  The  English  public  would 
be  touched,  just  as  Stephen's  mother  had  been 
touched.  He  knew  exactly  how  it  could  be  done. 
There  would  not  be  a  verbal  lie  in  it.  Were  there  not 
precedents?  What  right  had  anybody  to  make  a 
public  confession  for  a  dead  man?  Was  there  no  such 
thing  left  as  decency  and  reticence?  How  could  it  be 
right  to  publish  the  horrid  stuff  Mrs.  Blake  ought 
never  to  have  sent  him?  There  was  no  good  in  a 
chronicle  of  scandals.  After  all,  every  work  of  art 
had  its  own  economy.  He  seemed  to  hold  in  his  hand 
the  book  that  he  could  give  to  Trix  and  she  could 


312  Horace   BlaKe 

take;  and  then  he  seemed  to  see  two  long  volumes 
that  the  world  chortled  over  and  that  separated  him 
from  Trix  for  ever. 

Why  should  he  make  such  a  sacrifice  as  his  own 
happiness  just  for  the  sake  of  realism?  It  was  nothing 
else.  All  day  the  thing  went  on,  and  all  day  he  re- 
ceded farther  and  farther  away  from  his  own  habitual 
standards,  from  the  creed  of  his  intellectual  life.  The 
conclusion  was  obvious.  Once  only  did  he  really  stop, 
really  putt  himself  up.  It  came  to  him  quite  clearly 
for  a  few  minutes  that  he  must  simply  resign  the  whole 
thing,  and  tell  Trix  that  it  made  him  miserable  to 
give  it  up,  but  that  he  found  it  impossible  to  go  on. 
Then  he  would  trust  to  the  future  proving  his  friend- 
ship to  her,  trust,  too,  to  the  discoveries  that  she» 
poor  child,  must  make  in  time,  to  justify  him.  "Be- 
cause, after  all,"  he  thought,  "the  man  who  takes  on 
the  job  will  find  it  all  out  too.  Perhaps  he  will  chuck 
it. 

" '  After  me  cometh  a  builder, 
Tell  him  I,  too,  have  known. '  " 

The  clear  moment  was  soon  confused  by  the  old 
reasons.  Trix  must  be  saved  from  herself;  another 
man  must  not  be  allowed  to  add  to  her  suffering. 
"Advienne  que  pourra"  was  too  hard  a  saying  for 
Stephen  just  now. 

And  so  he  sat  down  in  his  club,  where  the  aspect  of 
things  was  cushioned  with  conventionality,  and  wrote 
to  Trix.  He  was  in  a  hurry,  it  seemed,  and  he  was  as 
red  as  if  he  were  ashamed.  He  wrote  then  in  haste, 
saying  that  he  had  quite  changed  his  view  as  to  the 
difficulty  of  using  her  contribution.  He  should  insist 
to  Mrs.  Blake  that  it  must  be  put  in  bodily;  it  was  so 


Horace    BlaKe  313 

vivid,  he  added,  and  so  lifelike  that  it  must  stand 
alone.  Then  as  he  wrote  his  pen  really  ran  away  with 
him  in  his  anxiety  to  please  her  and  to  do  away  with 
the  dreadful  effect  their  last  talk  had  left  on  her.  "As 
to  the  rest  of  what  I  said  when  we  met  in  the  train, " 
he  added,  "I  entreat  you  to  forget  it.  If  ever  you 
write  a  biography  and  have  to  deal  with  every  letter 
written  under  a  momentary  impulse,  and  often  repre- 
senting no  more  than  that  impulse,  you  will  find  that 
the  biographer,  like  his  subject,  must  go  through 
different  moods.  I  am  convinced  that  the  Life  must 
be  in  great  part  what  we  planned  in  the  Highlands, 
and  I  think,  again  and  again,  of  our  talks  there  as  my 
best  inspiration  which  will  be  with  me  constantly 
until  I  have  finished  the  work. " 

Stephen  ran  down  the  steps  of  the  club,  smiling  to 
himself.  The  thing  was  done,  settled — and  he  could 
now  enjoy  life  again.  But  he  had  unfortunately  for 
his  comfort  an  intellectual  conscience  which  many 
most  excellent  people  have  not.  It  is,  no  doubt, 
greatly  a  question  of  education.  Truth  in  literature 
may  be  the  instinct  of  men  of  genius  at  any  date;  it 
presents  itself  as  a  stern  duty  to  the  ordinary  culti- 
vated intelligence  only  in  an  advanced  state  of 
civilisation.  Stephen  had  the  standards  that  are 
flaunted  by  the  modern  journalist,  and  a  conscience 
that  insisted  that  he  should  live  up  to  them.  But 
there  were  other  virtues.  Loyalty  to  a  woman,  for 
instance,  was  certainly  a  virtue.  He  wanted  just  to  be 
happy  and  young  this  evening,  and  be  hanged  to  his 
career  and  to  the  great  biography.  Ordinary  life  and 
its  duties  and  joys  and  sorrows  would  be  enough  to 
fill  Stephen  Tempest's  share  of  time.  But  pleasure  is 
freakish,  and  somehow  she  neglected  Stephen  that 


314  Horace   BlaKe 

evening.  He  went  to  the  play,  and  just  before  reach- 
ing the  theatre  he  saw  Hales's  gaunt  figure  not  far  off. 
He  had  an  instinctive  movement  towards  avoiding 
him,  and  then  thought  that  Hales  had  exactly  the 
same  movement  as  to  himself.  He  felt  annoyed  at 
noticing  this;  why  should  Hales  avoid  him?  Through 
the  first  act  of  the  play  the  thought  of  Hales  bothered 
him.  It  was  all  very  well  for  Hales  to  have  that 
wonderful  biography  in  his  mind;  a  dry  old  person 
who  could  n't  possibly  conceive  that  the  happiness 
of  a  woman  mattered  rather  more  than  a  realistic 
biography.  Hales  knew  nothing  of  the  letter  to  Trix, 
but  Stephen  seemed  to  hear  stinging  comments  on  it 
issuing  from  the  rough  loose  lips,  made  bitter  by  the 
contempt  in  the  sleepy,  kind  eyes. 

Yet  Hales  had,  in  fact,  avoided  him  this  evening, 
from  the  same  motive  that  had  kept  him  silent  the 
other  night.  He  could  not  preach  truth  to  Stephen, 
and  so  he  would  rather  let  him  alone.  He  himself 
would  never  have  dreamed  of  being  false  to  love  for 
the  sake  of  cold,  intellectual  truth  in  the  old  days, 
when  his  impossible  aspirations  had  kept  him  night 
after  night  watching  the  woman  act  for  whom  Blake 
had  written  his  best  work.  It  seemed  to  him  now  that 
there  had  been  giants  in  those  days,  and  he  thought 
kindly  of  such  lesser  mortals  as  Stephen  and  the  girl 
who  had  written  that  exquisite  sketch  of  Blake's  last 
days.  After  Stephen  passed  into  the  theatre  Hales 
turned  back  and  stood  opposite  to  its  pseudo-classic 
portico  and  dreamed  a  little.  It  was  not  really  so  very 
long  ago,  but  it  was  all  the  vast  space  between  youth 
and  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  life.  Night  after 
night  he  had  taken  the  seat  in  the  middle  of  the  front 
dress-circle — it  had  been  his  own  practically  whenever 


Horace    BlaKe  315 

she  was  acting.  He  had  always  bought  a  programme 
just  to  see  in  print  before  the  curtain  went  up  the 
name  of  Nancy  Potter.  And  the  biographer  to  whom 
so  much  had  been  revealed  knew  nothing  of  the 
sorrows  of  Nancy  Potter.  How  quickly  the  memory 
of  her  had  faded  in  the  public  mind!  Even  Blake's 
Life  would  not  revive  the  fame  of  his  victim,  and  that 
were  better  so.  The  woman  for  whom  Puritan  Anne 
had  been  written  would  not  have  had  it  otherwise. 
He  passed  on  at  last  with  a  sigh  towards  the  music- 
hall  which  was  his  object  that  evening.  He  had  no 
notion  that  he  represented  to  Stephen  the  stern 
mentor  of  the  intellectual  conscience. 

Stephen  did  not  enjoy  himself  much.  He  thought 
the  play  stupid,  written  to  encourage  the  tricks  that 
had  spoilt  a  great  actor,  now  adored  by  a  public  that 
loves  the  caricature  of  a  once  fine  personality.  He 
began  quite  suddenly  to  feel  anxious  and  wretched. 
It  was  all  very  well,  but  that  Life  had  to  be  written, 
and  now  it  suddenly  seemed  impossible  to  carry  out 
the  low  task  of  the  man-of-the-world  sort  of  book. 
He  went  out  before  the  end  and  had  supper  some- 
where. The  detective  of  fiction  must  have  seen  the 
discomfort  of  guilt  in  his  mien.  Truth  is  a  very  merci- 
less mistress  and  will  be  revenged  for  desertion. 


XVII 

MY   CHILD 

TRIX  had  lost  all  interest,  so  she  told  herself,  in 
the  postman's  bell;  she  had  had  fancies  about 
letters,  but  they  were  over  now. 

And  then,  out  of  the  dark  grey  came  the  letter  from 
Stephen  Tempest ;  a  letter  that  undid  all  that  horrible 
episode  in  the  train.  What  could  it  mean?  She 
could  hardly  read  the  words.  He  wanted,  he  insisted 
on  using  her  paper  after  all. 

"I  am  convinced,"  he  wrote,  "that  the  Life  must 
be  in  great  part  what  we  planned  in  the  Highlands; 
our  talks  there  are  my  best  inspiration. " 

The  joy  flooded  over  her.  It  was  all  right  then — 
not  that  he  had  said  a  word  of  his  own  feelings,  but 
it  was  all  as  it  had  been  before  the  dreadful  mis- 
understanding— her  father's  Life,  Stephen's  ideal  of 
him,  Stephen's  friendship  with  herself.  She  hurried 
out  again  into  the  garden,  and  then  came  in  for  her 
hat.  With  head  high  and  flushed  cheeks  and  shining 
eyes  she  walked  into  the  village  and  bought  some 
foolscap.  Perhaps  she  could  write  a  little  more  that 
might  be  of  use. 

As  she  came  along  the  narrow  street  a  very  small 
boy  with  a  cheeky  face  looked  up  at  her  and  uttered 
the  one  word  "  swank. "  It  was  his  way  of  remarking 
on  the  fact  that  Trix's  light  young  figure  seemed  to  be 
curiously  expressive  of  triumph. 

Anne  Coniston  saw,  of  course,  that  something  of  an 
316 


Horace    BlaKe  317 

exceedingly  pleasing  nature  had  become  known  to 
Trix,  and,  as  it  was  something  that  must  have  been 
made  known  to  her  through  the  post,  she  did  not 
want  much  shrewdness  in  order  to  connect  it  with 
Stephen  Tempest.  Then  also,  during  the  few  hours 
they  had  spent  together  each  day,  Trix  had  uncon- 
sciously conveyed  to  Anne  that  the  chief  feature  of 
the  visit  to  the  Highlands  had  been  Stephen  Tempest 
himself.  Also  it  slipped  out  that  they  had  met  again 
in  the  train,  and  Anne  felt  that  it  would  have  been 
more  natural  if  Trix  had  mentioned  the  meeting  on 
the  first  evening  of  her  return.  Then  Trix  began  to 
write  again,  rather  ostentatiously,  letting  large  sheets 
of  foolscap  lie  about  on  the  floor  of  her  room,  and 
warning  the  little  housemaid  not  to  touch  them  in  a 
voice  of  some  importance.  Anne  determined  to  take 
no  notice  of  what  she  was  doing,  as  Kate  must  come 
back  soon.  Meanwhile  she  and  Trix  jogged  along, 
falling  into  the  habits  of  past  kindness.  Trix  helped 
her  aunt  in  small  matters  in  house  and  garden,  and 
in  the  care  of  the  live-stock,  which  consisted  of 
chickens,  two  dogs,  a  cat  and  two  birds.  Anne's 
annoyance  slumbered  or  smouldered;  she  did  not 
know  herself  which  process  it  was  going  through. 
She  found  herself  laughing  at  old  jokes  about  queer 
neighbours  rich  and  poor  that  Trix  brought  up  afresh, 
with  a  happy  ring  in  her  laugh. 

Kate  had  intended,  when  she  went  to  London 
chiefly  in  order  to  see  Horace's  publishers,  to  look  at 
the  same  time  at  a  few  houses  and  compare  the  rents 
in  different  quarters.  But  she  had  gone  much  farther 
than  a  merely  tentative  inquiry.  She  had  been  asked 
to  see  the  house  of  a  friend  of  the  George  Shenstones 
in  Eccleston  Square.  The  house  appeared  to  be  ex- 


318  Horace    DlaKe 

actly  what  she  wanted — roomy,  sunny,  quiet.  She 
intended  to  think  it  over  at  her  leisure  when  she 
found  that  she  must  either  take  it  at  once  or  risk 
losing  it  altogether.  So,  at  least,  the  trustworthy 
agents  assured  her. 

From  day  to  day  she  hoped  to  finish  the  weary 
business,  and  from  day  to  day  she  found  it  impossible 
to  get  away.  This  house  in  London  was  part  of  Anne 
Coniston's  grievance.  It  was  for  Trix's  sake  that 
Kate  was  taking  this  house  instead  of  going  abroad 
with  herself.  She  knew  that  Kate  meant  to  make  a 
position  for  Trix  as  a  grown-up  girl  immediately,  and 
without  the  risk  of  delay,  while  people  still  had  the 
name  of  Blake  constantly  in  their  minds.  It  seemed 
intolerable  to  her  that  Kate,  who  for  so  many  years 
had  never  been  free  to  go  her  own  way  and  have  a 
life  of  her  own,  should  be  at  once  obliged  to  take  up 
this  burden  of  making  a  life  for  Trix. 

It  was  not  until  she  noticed  a  large  registered 
envelope  lying  on  the  hall-table  one  evening,  addressed 
to  Stephen  Tempest,  that  she  saw  clearly  as  daylight 
what  the  girl  had  been  doing.  She  had  been  helping 
Stephen  Tempest  again,  for  although  Kate  had  been 
as  reserved  as  usual  and  had  not  told  Anne  about 
Trix's  paper,  she  had  been  fairly  sure  as  to  what  was 
the  difficulty  that  hurt  Kate  so  much. 

Trix  was  feeling  particularly  happy  this  evening. 
She  had  no  sense  of  guilt  about  the  registered  envelope 
lying  in  the  hall.  There  was  nothing  in  it  that  any- 
body could  mind.  It  only  gave  scraps  of  her  father's 
talk  about  his  childhood,  his  happy  and  happy-go- 
lucky  education,  his  father  and  mother  and  Mary. 
Then,  too,  she  had  put  down  things  he  had  said  about 
books,  about  great  authors  and  little  authors,  and  she 


Horace    BlaKe  319 

even  had  recorded  some  cheerful,  silly  little  jokes — 
while  a  few  tears  fell  upon  the  paper. 

But  talking  with  Aunt  Anne  at  supper  that  evening 
was  heavy  going,  like  walking  on  a  ploughed  field. 
After  supper  and  coffee  Anne  took  up  a  book.  Pres- 
ently she  looked  over  it  at  Trix,  who  was  lying  back 
in  a  deep  chair  gazing  into  the  fire  with  smiling  eyes. 

"  You  have  been  very  busy  writing  these  last  days. " 

"Yes." 

Trix  blushed. 

"Are  you  sending  what  you  have  written  to  Mr. 
Tempest?" 

"Yes." 

"But  why?" 

"It  is  something  more  I  have  written  for  him. " 

"You  mean  that  it  is  something  for  the  Life?" 

"Yes,"  Trix  answered  quickly.  "It  is  things  that 
father  told  me  about  himself,  and  about  his  mother 
and  his  sister,  and  about  books."  She  hurried  out 
what  seemed  to  her  such  a  harmless  category. 

Anne  was  silent.    At  last  she  said  abruptly: 

"So  you  were  writing  about  your  father  all  that 
time  in  September?" 

"Yes,  Aunt  Anne,  didn't  you  know?  I  wrote  a 
great  deal.  I  thought  that  if  I  wrote  down  all  that 
happened  while  I  was  alone  with  my  father  it  might 
be  of  use  to  Mr.  Tempest.  Nobody  else  knows  how 
wonderful  father  was  during  those  last  weeks,  except 
me.  You  see,"  she  went  on,  rushing  on  to  the  most 
delicate  ground  unconscious  of  her  danger;  "no  one 
else  was  with  him. " 

There  was  intense  pity  and  yearning  in  her  tone  as 
she  said  those  last  words,  but  also  a  little  self-import- 
ance which  Anne  magnified. 


320  Horace  BlaKe 

"  I  could  say  how  he  bore  all  those  terrible  sufferings 
and  how  unselfish  he  was.  Even  if  I  put  it  badly,  I 
thought  Mr.  Tempest  could  use  it  and  re- write  it, 
but— 

"Why  did  you  send  it  to  him  without  telling  your 
mother?" 

"I  thought  it  might  be  painful  to  her  because " 

"Because?"  repeated  Anne. 

"Because  she  was  not  there,"  blundered  Trix, 
"and  because  she  would  not  like  the  religious  part." 

"And  so  you  sent  to  Mr.  Tempest  what  you  knew 
she  would  not  like?" 

Anne  was  standing  now.  She  had  moved  near  the 
window. 

"It  was  all  true,"  said  Trix  doggedly. 

"You  had  no  right  to  interfere, "  said  Anne.  " You 
behaved  very  badly  in  sending  it  to  Mr.  Tempest 
without  our  having  seen  it.  If  you  had  had  some 
consideration,  some  feeling  for  her,  you  must  have 
known  that  your  father's  wife  was  the  only  person 
who  had  any  rights  in  the  matter.  If  you  had  had 
any  thought  for  her " 

"Mother  has  not  had  much  thought  for  me,"  said 
Trix  very  slowly.  "She  left  me  alone  all  that  time, 
and  then — "  She  began  to  cry.  "You  have 
neither  of  you  thought  at  all  for  me  all  through;  you 
did  not  think  I  had  even  the  right  to  be  unhappy. " 

Anne  Coniston  was  standing  by  the  window,  her 
lips  almost  as  white  as  her  face.  All  the  resentment 
that  had  been  at  the  bottom  of  her  mind  ever  since 
Kate  first  put  Trix  into  her  arms  was  surging  over  her 
now,  it  was  becoming  almost  past  her  own  control. 

"You  think  I  have  no  rights,  but  you  are  wrong," 
continued  Trix.  "I  know  how  he  loved  me,  and  I  am 


Horace    BlaKe  321 

the  only  one  who  knows  anything  about  the  end  of  his 
life,  and  it  would  not  be  right  to  keep  it  to  myself. 
If  mother  won't  put  it  in  the  biography,  I  will  send  it 
somewhere  as  an  article;  nobody  can  prevent  me. " 

"You  would  n't — you  could  n't  dare  to  do  that!" 

"I  will." 

"You  are  determined  to  do  this?" 

"Absolutely  determined.  I  have  told  him  so 
already." 

"You  won't  be  influenced  by  Kate's  wishes,  by  the 
thought  of  the  pain  you  will  give  her?" 

Anne  was  in  reality  driving  Trix  to  put  her  back 
to  the  wall,  but  she  did  not  know  that  that  was  what 
she  wished  to  do. 

"The  truth  must  come  out,  it  ought  to  come  out, " 
said  Trix  doggedly. 

"Then,  my  poor  child,"  said  Anne  in  a  low  voice, 
"I  must  tell  you  what  you  ought  to  have  been  told 
long  ago. " 

Trix  was  frightened  by  her  tone,  and  yet  felt  as 
if  she  had  known  before  whatever  her  aunt  might 
say. 

"My  poor  child,"  Anne  repeated.  She  was  trying 
to  convince  herself  by  her  words  and  her  altered  tone, 
of  her  own  kindness  towards  Trix. 

She  sat  down  with  her  face  turned  away  from  the 
flushed  and  tearful  girl  sunk  in  the  big  chair. 

"If  you  had  tried  to  behave  like  a  daughter  to  Kate 
the  state  of  things  might  be  possible.  From  the  first 
I  thought  it  very  wrong  to  deceive  you,  and  the 
person  who  ought  to  have  refused  to  allow  you  to 
be  deceived  was  your  father.  Kate  did  it  to  save 
your  father's  reputation  and  out  of  compassion  for 
— for — ' '  She  paused. 
ax 


322  Horace    BlaKe 

"Be  quick,"  said  Trix,  "who  was  it  out  of  com- 
passion for?" 

Anne  was  frightened. 

"Who  was  it  out  of  compassion  for,  Aunt  Anne?" 

"For  your  real  mother." 

"Be  quick,"  repeated  Trix  mechanically,  "who 
was  my  mother?" 

"Nancy  Potter." 

"The  actress?" 

"She  acted  in  your  father's  plays." 

"Be  quick,"  said  Trix,  "where  was  I  born?  How 
did  your  sister  conceal  the  truth?" 

"Kate  wanted  to  make  reparation  for  Horace's 
treatment  of  Nancy  Potter,  so  she  took  her  away. 
I  think  it  was  because  your  father  showed  so  little 
pity  that  Kate  took  it  all  upon  herself.  It  was 
announced  that  they  would  travel  together  in  Amer- 
ica; she  was  to  act  in  New  York — not  in  one  of  your 
father's  plays,  she  refused  to  act  anything  of  his 
again.  When  they  had  been  some  time  in  New  York, 
they  went  very  far  West  where  no  one  knew  them, 
and  there  they  changed  their  names.  Six  months 
afterwards  Kate  brought  you  in  here  and  put  you  in 
my  arms. " 

"Why  didn't  you  kill  me  then?  Where  was  my 
mother?" 

"She  was  dead,  and  in  dying  she  made  Kate 
promise  that  you  should  never  be  left  alone  with  your 
father." 

"Be  quick, "  said  Trix  again,  as  if  her  brain  worked 
purely  mechanically,  and  then  she  was  able  to  faint. 

When  she  became  conscious  she  was  in  bed,  and  the 
doctor  was  watching  her.  He  was  startled  at  the 
horrified  pain  and  humiliation  in  her  face.  She  had 


Horace    BlaKe  323 

known  him  ever  since  she  could  remember  anything. 
She  held  out  a  small,  imploring  hand. 

"Dr.  Anderson,  will  you  take  me  away?" 

"  My  dear  Trix, "  he  said  gently. 

"Oh,  take  me  away, "  she  cried  again;  and  then  the 
tears  burst  forth.  There  was  a  slight  noise  at  the 
door. 

" Don't  let  me  see  her.    I  need  n't  see  her,  need  I? " 

"I  can't  tell  her  not  to  come  in,  in  her  own  house, " 
he  said  weakly. 

Trix  shut  her  eyes  and  clenched  her  fists  as  the  door 
opened. 

"Mrs.  Blake,"  said  Dr.  Anderson. 

Kate  did  not  seem  to  notice  him ;  she  moved  quickly, 
noiselessly  to  the  other  side  of  the  bed  and  knelt  down 
and  put  her  arms  round  Trix. 

"My  child,"  she  cried,  in  a  tone  of  infinite 
tenderness. 

And  Trix  clung  to  her  weeping.  All  the  lost  ma- 
ternal power  in  Kate,  wasted  hitherto,  was  alive.  She 
held  the  weeping  girl  with  a  strength  of  possessive 
love.  Touch  was  her  power  of  expression  now;  she 
tried  no  other.  And  Trix  did  not  shrink,  only  a 
generous  nature,  as  generous  as  Kate's  own,  could 
have  endured  to  receive  that  touch.  But  Trix  knew 
by  the  instinct  of  true  human  kindness  that  by  open- 
ing her  heart  to  Kate  now  she  could  make  some 
return  for  all  the  agony  she  had  caused  her.  The 
wounded  animal  would  fain  have  crept  into  a  hole 
to  die,  but  the  soul  rose  to  receive  the  full  burden  of 
Kate's  enormous,  heroic  mistake.  Any  debt  can  be 
repaid  by  love. 

At  last,  with  a  supreme  effort,  the  child  managed  to 
say; 


324  Horace    BlaK* 

"Mother,  need  I ?" 

She  had  never  said  "Mother"  like  that  before. 

"Need  you  what,  my  darling?" 

"Need  I  see  her?" 

"Certainly  not." 

Then  Kate  went  to  fetch  back  Dr.  Anderson,  who 
had  left  the  room. 

"  It  is  better  now  mother  has  come? "  was  his  most 
unfortunate  remark. 

A  sickly  smile  was  forced  on  Tjrix's  white  face. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  she  murmured. 

"  She  is  not  ill,  you  know,"  said  Dr.  Anderson  in 
a  puzzled  voice,  when  he  came  down-stairs;  "  but  I 
think  I  would  humour  her  in  eVery  way  you  can.  And 
a  change  now;  could  she  hav£  a  change?" 

"  She  must  sleep  to-nighjt  somehow,"  said  Kate 
with  decision. 

He  consented  against  hi^  will  to  give  her  a  seda- 
tive, but  she  was  asleep  nrom  exhaustion  before  it 
arrived.  / 

Kate  would  not  speak  to  the  now  miserable  and 
repentant  Anne.  All  these  years,  utterly  against  the 
grain,  Anne  had  brought/  up  Horace  Blake's  illegiti- 
mate child,  and  all  through  those  years  the  dull,  blind 
exasperation  had  never  befeen  extinguished.  To-night's 
work  had  been  the  outcome  of  eighteen  years  of  self- 
repression.  She  had  done  it  all  for  Kate's  sake,  and 
Kate  would  not  forgive  jher. 

Two  days  later  Stephen  received  a  letter  addressed 
in  a  writing  that  puzzled  him.  It  was  so  like  and  yet 
so  unlike  Trix's  writing.  He  tore  it  open ;  it  was  from 
Trix,  but  the  writing  ivas  untidy  and  blotted: 


Horace    BlaKe  325 

"  DEAR  MR.  TEMPEST, 

"  I  ought  not  to  have  interfered  as  to  the  biography 
you  are  writing.  Please  burn  what  I  sent  you  and 
forget  it.  You  must  be  guided  entirely  by  mother's 
wishes, 

"Yours  truly, 

"TRix  BLAKE." 

He  put  it  down — the  piteous,  crooked  little  scrawl. 
Oh!  what  had  they  done  to  her,  those  hard  women? 
How  had  they  conquered  her  so  completely  and  so 
quickly?  It  made  him  furious  to  think  what  might 
have  been  done  to  make  her  come  round  like  this. 
Not  to  him,  oh,  no;  she  was  not  turning  to  him — the 
stiff  "Yours  truly"  showed  that  plainly  enough. 
Poor  darling  child,  they  must  have  hurt  her  with 
horrible  revelations  as  to  her  father's  life,  and  she 
would  feel  that  he  was  one  with  her  torturers.  All 
that  fiery  light  in  her  eyes  and  her  lovely  flushed  face, 
how  had  they  extinguished  it?  Angry  with  him  or 
not,  he  would  rather  have  her  so  than  crushed.  How 
shaky  the  writing  looked,  how  unlike  her  usual  writ- 
ing. Was  there  no  one  to  comfort  her,  no  one  to 
understand  what  disillusion  as  to  her  father  could 
mean  to  her?  They  had  not  even  allowed  her  the 
right  to  mourn  him  directly  after  his  death,  they  had 
shown  her  no  sympathy,  they  would  show  her  no 
sympathy  now  in  a  loss  far  greater  than  death — the 
loss  of  her  ideal.  And  was  he  to  stand  by  and  do 
nothing  to  help  her?  Yes,  because  she  did  not  want 
his  help,  because  it  was  Horace's  own  doing — Horace's 
past  that  cut  her  off  in  her  misery.  Stephen  could 
not  put  the  statue  up  again  on  its  pedestal  and  so 
Trix  would  have  no  use  for  him. 


PART  III 


327 


THAT  DOESN'T  MATTER 

KATE  was  standing  in  the  dining-room  of  her  new 
house  in  Eccleston  Square  in  the  midst  of  chaos. 
Pictures  stood  against  the  walls,  the  sideboard  showed 
its  unpolished  and  dreary  back  in  the  very  middle  of 
the  room,  the  dinner-table  was  in  sections,  blocking 
up  the  fireplace,  the  chairs,  covered  in  sackcloth,  were 
stacked  in  the  window,  and  a  rolled  Turkey  carpet 
was  the  only  available  seat.  On  it  Trix  was  seated 
bending  forward  to  lift  some  books  out  of  a  packing- 
case. 

"Shall  these  go  to  your  sitting-room  or  the  drawing- 
room?" 

"My  sitting-room,"  said  Kate. 

"After  I  've  loaded  that  tray  we  ought  to  go  and 
get  some  luncheon,"  said  Trix.  "You  are  looking 
very  white,  mother. " 

"Black  I  should  have  thought,"  said  Kate,  ex- 
tending her  hands.  "We  will  go  if  you  will  come  up 
first  to  choose  the  covers  for  your  own  rooms. " 

There  was  the  faintest  tremor  in  Kate's  voice. 

"I  wish  you  would  choose  for  me,"  said  Trix 
lightly;  "you  have  much  better  taste." 

Kate  turned  away,  suppressing  a  sigh.  If  only 
Trix  would  take  the  faintest  interest  in  her  own 
rooms ! 

"  I  'm  sure  the  heliotrope  coloured  thing  will  look 
best  in  your  bedroom,"  Trix  called  after  her. 

329 


330  Horace    BlaKe 

Presently,  as  Kate  did  not  return,  Trix  followed 
her. 

"Now,  mother — "  she  began. 

"I  am  only  putting  this  pottery  in  a  safe  place. 
They  are  going  to  lay  your  carpet  to-day. " 

Kate's  hands  were  full  of  Breton  pottery.  Trix 
took  the  things  from  her  rather  rashly. 

"To  luncheon  you  shall  come,"  she  said.  As  the 
pottery  changed  hands  a  little  benitier  fell  to  the 
ground  and  was  broken. 

"  Oh,  that  does  n't  matter, "  said  Trix  quickly.  "  I 
meant  to  sell  it  with  the  others  at  some  bazaar  this 
winter;  it  would  not  have  fetched  much.  Now  do 
come. " 

So  they  hurried  away  to  the  club,  ate  a  hasty 
luncheon,  and  soon  returned  to  the  scene  of  action. 

There  were  moments  when  this  unpacking  became 
almost  unbearable  to  Kate.  Perhaps  the  thing  that 
hurt  most  was  the  hanging  of  the  Surot  portrait  in 
her  own  sitting-room.  She  had  seen  it  in  the  artist's 
studio,  but  now  she  was  to  live  with  it,  and  as  the 
men  raised  it  above  the  chimney-piece  and  asked  her 
at  what  height  it  was  to  be  fixed  she  felt  as  if  she  would 
rather  tell  them  to  take  it  out  of  her  sight.  It  was 
terribly  living,  terribly  like  Horace  as  she  had  seen 
him  last.  Surot  had  known  that  he  was  painting  a 
condemned  man,  and  he  had  not  concealed  it,  but  he 
had  given  the  intense  impression  of  vitality  and  the 
slightest  smile  of  triumph  on  the  mouth  and  of  con- 
tempt in  the  great  light  eyes.  It  dominated  the  little 
room  so  absolutely,  but  it  must  stay  there.  She  could 
not  let  it  dominate  the  room  in  which  she  and  Trix 
were  to  live  together. 

It  took  a  long  time  to  fix  it,  and  then  the  men  who 


Horace    BlaKe  331 

had  brought  it  from  the  studio  went  away.  Kate  sat 
down  on  a  stool  feeling  incapable  of  further  action. 
How  was  she  to  live  with  that  painted  thing  that 
taunted  her  with  her  loneliness?  Did  other  women 
really  find  comfort  in  pictures  of  their  dead?  She 
never  could.  Trix  had  come  into  the  doorway;  Kate 
turned  round  to  speak  to  her,  but  she  had  already 
gone. 

"Tea  is  on  the  packing-case — come  and  have  it," 
she  cried  from  the  dining-room.  Kate  came  and  sat 
by  her  on  the  roll  of  Turkey  carpet,  and  Trix  made 
her  admire  the  neatness  of  the  spread  on  the  packing- 
case.  Kate  took  her  tea  and  smiled  affectionately. 
She  wondered  as  she  sipped  it  whether  their  life,  when 
they  were  settled,  could  be  as  bad  as  this  horrible, 
dreary  arranging  for  it.  She  had  chosen  a  house 
larger  than  their  needs  required,  as  she  wanted  Trix 
and  herself  to  have  plenty  of  space  at  their  disposal. 
There  was  to  be  not  only  a  sitting-room  for  each,  but 
each  was  to  have  a  spare  room  for  her  own  special 
guests.  Trix,  always  helpful,  always  considerate  and 
indefatigable,  seemed  all  the  time  like  a  kind  little 
visitor,  who  had  no  real  connection  with  what  was 
going  on.  Would  the  silence  as  to  any  deeper  things 
in  which  they  were  passing  their  days  ever  be  broken? 
She  was  putting  down  her  empty  tea-cup  when  she 
saw  that  Trix  was  cutting  the  wrappings  off  a  stack  of 
chairs. 

"Don't  lift  those,  Trix." 

"Done,"  said  Trix,  putting  two  chairs  on  the 
floor  and  revealing  an  old  leather  couch.  "Now 
there  you  are  to  rest  until  Maple's  men  are  so  kind  as 
to  come  with  the  other  carpets,  and  I  am  going  round 
to  the  post-office.  I  want  cleaner  air  than  this. " 


332  Horace   BlaKe 

Kate  did  as  she  was  bid  and  sank  back  on  the 
couch.  She  heard  the  front  door  bang  as  Trix  went 
out,  and  her  thoughts  still  busied  themselves  about 
her.  To-day  she  was  feeling  profoundly  discouraged. 
After  every  emotional  crisis  there  is  a  tendency  to 
reaction.  Kate  had  lived  on  mountain  heights  of 
feeling  in  the  days  that  followed  Anne's  wicked 
blundering  betrayal  of  the  secret  to  Trix,  but  the 
exaltation  could  not  last.  For  eighteen  years  there 
had  been  the  strain  of  the  false  position.  Kate  before 
that  had  hungered  for  a  child  with  an  agonised 
hunger.  And  then  she  had  of  her  own  motion  put 
upon  herself  this  horrible  burden.  She  had  always 
felt  intense  repugnance  to  the  idea  of  adopting  a  child 
and  yet  she  had  taken  into  her  arms  the  child  of 
Horace's  most  inexcusable  sin.  Acute  jealousy  of 
other  women  was  passed  before  she  had  witnessed  the 
long  struggle  and  the  fall  in  the  unequal  combat 
between  Horace  and  Nancy  Potter.  She  had  been 
merciful  before  but  not  pitiful,  as  she  was  to  the  girl 
who  never  lifted  her  head  after  the  shame  of  her  sin. 
Kate  knew  the  reality  of  Nancy  Potter's  repentance, 
recognised  the  depths  of  the  shame  that  was  so  soon 
to  kill  the  woman  who  had  made  London  wild  with 
admiration  by  her  acting  of  Puritan  Anne.  Nancy 
had  shrunk  from  •  Horace's  wife,  but  Kate  had  been 
undaunted.  She  had  so  identified  herself  with  Horace 
that  it  seemed  as  if  she  were  the  offender,  Nancy  the 
injured,  in  their  intercourse  together.  She  could 
remember  distinctly  the  moment  when  the  strange 
scheme  of  self-effacement  had  first  struck  her.  Nancy 
had  told  her  that  she  would  be  a  mother  in  the  spring. 
Kate  saw  the  publicity,  the  horrors  of  the  scandal  if 
the  world  should  realise  that  Nancy  Potter  had  acted 


Horace   BlaKe  333 

her  own  story  in  Puritan  Anne.  She  knew  at  once 
that  for  this  Horace  could  never  be  forgiven;  she 
knew  too  that  Nancy  could  never  lift  her  head  again. 
It  seemed  obvious  to  try  to  save  them  both,  but  the 
necessary  sacrifice  was  that  of  her  own  maternal 
feelings;  her  feelings  as  a  wife  had  been  tortured 
enough,  but  the  mother's  feelings  had  hitherto  been 
left,  if  unfulfilled,  a  sacred  though  empty  part  of  her 
nature.  Kate  would  have  to  pretend,  and  she  hated 
pretence,  that  this  child  born  in  despair  and  shame 
was  her  own  baby,  the  little  glorified  baby  that  for 
years  had  been  a  vision  in  her  innermost  mind.  And 
when  the  trial  came  it  proved  worse  than  she  expected. 

Nancy  died  as  a  penitent;  her  religious  expressions 
meant  little  to  Kate,  but  the  woman's  longing  to  be 
free  from  stain  appealed  to  her  intensely.  Kate  was 
with  her  when  she  died  in  the  far  west  of  America. 
She  kissed  her  cold  forehead  with  passionate  tender- 
ness, and  then  turning,  saw  that  the  old  servant  who 
had  never  left  Nancy  was  holding  out  the  baby  for 
her  to  take  it.  It  was,  of  course,  not  the  first  time 
she  had  seen  the  child,  and  had  seen,  or  imagined,  a 
likeness  to  Horace — but  this  time  the  repulsion  was 
overwhelming.  The  nurse  understood,  and  when  they 
had  to  part  for  Kate  to  go  back  to  England  she 
implored  to  be  allowed  to  keep  the  baby. 

Kate  never  knew  if  that  would  not  really  have  been 
the  better  way,  but  even  then  it  was  too  late:  the 
announcement  of  its  birth  had  appeared  already — 
Trix  to  the  world  was  the  child  of  the  wife  of  Horace 
Blake. 

Kate  had  left  Horace  in  a  state  of  mind  that  she 
only  understood.  He  was  resisting  remorse  after  his 
own  fashion,  deliberately  living  in  his  work,  writing 


334  Horace    BlaKe 

incessantly,  talking  of  nothing  but  the  next  play, 
forcing  himself  to  speak  of  a  great  play  to  be  written 
for  Nancy  Potter  to  act  in  the  autumn,  ignoring 
everything  he  could  ignore,  but  watching  Kate  in- 
tensely and  with  astonishment.  She  knew  that  if 
she  had  been  anybody  else,  Horace  would  have 
written  a  play  with  herself  for  the  heroine,  but, 
thank  Heaven,  he  had  some  reverence  left.  When 
she  came  back,  he  ignored  Trix  utterly.  He  was 
changed;  Kate  was  convinced  he  had  been  doing 
strange  things  to  get  the  best  of  that  fight  with  re- 
morse; besides,  she  knew  that  she  could  never  leave 
him  long  without  his  sinking  lower.  She  had  come 
back  to  a  hard,  full  life,  and  she  calmly  shouldered 
her  burden  again.  A  play  had  failed.  Horace  for 
some  time  wrote  nothing  that  took  a  hold  on  the 
public.  He  had  not  saved  much  from  the  proceeds 
of  his  success  of  the  previous  year. 

Anne  Coniston  undertook  Trix  from  the  first.  In 
the  years  of  her  babyhood  Kate  had  no  anxiety  about 
her,  but  as  time  passed  she  felt  that  she  had  no 
response  ready  for  the  instinctive  demands  of  the 
childish  eyes  that  were  filled  with  a  strange  light. 
Kate  hated  a  false  position,  and  she  hated  to  fail  in 
duty.  She  hated  the  thought  that  Trix  would  know 
that  she  had  not  a  mother  like  other  mothers.  She 
tried  to  use  her  poor,  stunted  maternal  instincts; 
sometimes  she  did  well,  but  often  she  failed,  and  was 
pitiable  in  her  own  eyes.  She  could  not  tell  if  it 
would  be  better  or  worse  if  Horace  cared  for  Trix. 
She  did  not  know  that  he  acted  a  part  out  of  con- 
sideration for  her.  He  often  put  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  seeing  Trix,  but  when  she  was  with  them  the 
little  girl  gained  upon  him  half  unconsciously  to  him- 


Horace   BlaKe  335 

self.  Horace,  in  spite  of  an  enormous  region  of 
conscious  sensations  and  artistic  sympathies  culti- 
vated to  the  very  utmost,  had  large  regions  of  sub- 
conscious activity  also.  But  when  his  last  illness 
came  and  the  great  dread  made  him  long  for  some- 
thing and  somebody  different  to  distract  him  from 
himself,  the  submerged  paternal  instinct  had  come 
uppermost  and  he  had  claimed  Trix.  Then  Kate,  in 
spite  of  a  large  submission,  knew  that  for  herself  this 
was  the  worst.  It  was  not  the  jealousy  that  wants 
to  punish,  to  inflict  suffering,  it  was  only  the  infinite 
pain  of  seeing  Horace,  at  the  very  end,  in  their  short 
evening,  send  her  away  and  put  the  child  of  Nancy 
Potter  in  her  place. 

All  that  Kate  was  able  to  do  for  Trix  after  his  death 
she  did,  but  she  was  not  able  to  break  silence,  not 
able  to  weep  together  with  her.  Her  anguish  and  her 
knowledge  belonged  to  herself  alone.  Then  as  time 
passed  and  Trix  showed  more  and  more  the  shallow 
romance  of  her  little  grief,  betraying  her  loneliness 
with  a  dramatic  instinct  to  the  onlookers,  Kate  felt 
the  old  horror  of  her  failure  to  be  the  child's  mother. 

At  last  the  great  deeps  were  broken  up,  the  sacrilege 
of  the  false  position  came  to  an  end.  Nancy  Potter's 
child  understood,  and  was  it  not  the  deep,  unutterable 
gratitude  of  the  dying  mother  that  shone  in  Trix's 
face,  conquering  with  strange  magnanimity  the  an- 
guish and  the  shame?  Gratitude  to  Kate  had  con- 
quered in  Nancy  the  shame  of  her  motherhood,  it 
conquered  in  Trix  the  shame  of  the  knowledge  of  her 
birth.  The  false  position  was  at  an  end;  there  need 
be  no  more  acting,  no  more  forcing  of  the  feelings. 
And,  therefore,  as  they  were  unbidden,  they  came  at 
last.  Kate  could  love  Trix  now,  and  she  was  aston- 


336  Horace   BlaKe 

ished  as  she  asked  herself  whether  a  mother's  love 
could  be  very  different  to  this.  They  said  so  little  of 
what  was  filling  their  thoughts,  and  Kate  was  in- 
tensely anxious ;  she  almost  wished  for  an  illness  with 
its  recovery  as  safer  than  this  brave  silence.  Trix 
was  not  ill,  only  a  little  pale.  She  moved  alertly,  she 
seemed  to  be  always  moving,  yet  she  never  owned  to 
being  tired.  It  was  difficult  to  find  out  how  she  slept. 
Then  gradually  the  silence  that  had  been  so  eloquent 
became  mysterious  and  at  length  quite  dumb.  The 
devotion  to  Kate  was  as  convincing  as  ever — indeed, 
it  never  struck  either  of  them  to  doubt  it  again. 

Trix's  whole  attitude  was  very  sympathetic  to 
Kate;  it  was  brave  and  firm,  nothing  puling,  no  false 
shame.  But  what  she  could  not  tell  in  her  heart  was 
what  the  child  felt  about  her  father.  Kate  shrank 
utterly  from  the  question.  What  was  passing  in 
Trix's  mind,  while  she  held  her  small  head  so  erect, 
that  might  be  an  insult  to  Horace's  memory?  To 
Kate,  with  her  terrible  fidelity,  that  would  be  almost 
unbearable.  Well,  but  it  must  be  borne;  she  had 
borne  with  Nancy  Potter's  horror  of  her  seducer,  she 
must  bear  with  Trix's  horror  of  her  father.  She  had 
seen  her  face  to-day  when  she  avoided  looking  at  his 
picture. 

But  she  would  not  fancy  things;  she  would  bury 
the  question  in  her  own  mind.  Mercifully  Trix  had 
never  been  unattractive  to  her,  even  when  she  had 
tried  her  most.  Now  it  was  at  moments  almost  a 
satisfaction  to  realise  her  likeness  to  her  father. 

No  word  passed  Trix's  lips  as  to  the  biography,  as 
to  Stephen,  as  to  what  she  herself  had  written  for  it. 
Only  words,  and  they  a  few,  had  told  her  what  Trix 
felt  towards  herself.  She  watched  for  any  indication, 


Horace  BlaKe  337 

however  slight,  that  would  help  to  explain.  She  had 
looked  out  curiously  for  any  symptoms  of  the  religious 
ideas  that  had  been  caught  by  Trix  on  that  Breton 
coast,  but  she  could  see  none  at  all. 

To-day  the  discouragement  that  had  been  growing 
in  her  mind  was  brought  strongly  before  her  because 
she  had  seen  and  understood  the  accident  to  the 
Breton  benilier.  Trix  had  meant  it  to  drop.  Kate 
would  not  mind;  she  would  be  glad  if  the  child  had 
turned  from  all  that  nonsense,  but  there  was,  in  the 
action,  something  acutely  painful  to  her.  Yet  how 
were  they  to  live  together  if  she  allowed  herself  to 
become  sensitive,  perhaps  imaginative?  No,  Kate 
now  would  turn  bravely  to  their  future  in  their  new 
home  and  face  it  firmly.  This  transition  state  must 
be  got  over  quickly.  She  determined  that  she  would 
push  on  much  faster  with  reducing  the  house  to  a 
habitable  state.  Anything  was  better  than  these 
dreary  days  spent  in  waiting  about  for  men  who  came 
late  or  in  unpacking  those  terribly  familiar  things  that 
had  belonged  to  her  father  or  had  been  picked  up  by 
herself  and  Horace.  The  Conistons  were  famous  for 
their  knowledge  of  china,  furniture,  brass — all  the 
things  about  which  most  of  us  blunder  in  our  buying, 
were  obviously  right  or  wrong  to  St.  John  Coniston 
and  his  daughters.  Horace  had  been  an  apt  and 
admiring  pupil.  Once  or  twice  Kate  had  almost  told 
Trix  where  and  how  they  had  bought  many  of  these 
things  that  were  associated  in  her  mind  with  some  of 
the  happiest  moments  in  her  life,  but  she  had  checked 
herself.  Like  all  good  judges  of  what  is  beautiful 
she  suffered  from  what  was  ugly,  and  she  also  hated 
disorder  and  dirt  and  confusion.  So  she  determined 
to  work  harder  and  hurry  things  up.  Once  they  were 


338  Horace    BlaKe 

in  the  house  she  could  see  something  of  the  people  she 
wanted  Trix  to  know.  At  the  club  already  quite  a 
number  of  last  season's  acquaintances  had  welcomed 
her  warmly.  But  she  wanted  to  get  into  a  house  of 
her  own  where  she  could  see  whom  she  liked  and  not 
be  disturbed  by  some  of  the  loquacious  ladies  who 
were  tiresome  at  the  club.  Trix  had  been  quite  ready 
to  talk  with  these  acquaintances  of  her  mother's  and 
had  not  been  as  fastidious  as  Kate  had  expected  her 
to  be. 

As  they  went  back  in  a  taxi  after  despairing  of  the 
man  from  Maple's,  Trix  said: 

"  If  you  don't  want  me  to-morrow  evening  I  should 
like  to  go  to  the  Woman's  Suffrage  meeting  they  were 
talking  of  last  night." 

Kate  was  relieved  to  hear  any  proposition  as  to  her 
own  wishes  from  Trix,  and  cordially  agreed  that  she 
should  go  under  the  wing  of  two  Miss  Cunninghams 
who  haunted  the  club  and  who  were  ardent  supporters 
of  the  movement. 


II 

THE   EVIL   THAT   MEN   DO    LIVES   AFTER   THEM 

IT  seemed  to  Stephen  as  he  waited  in  Mrs.  Blake's 
drawing-room  on  a  cold  winter's  morning  that  he 
had  never  liked  a  room  better.  It  gave  a  sense  of 
space :  the  colouring  was  that  of  a  shelf  of  well-bound 
books. 

He  had  seen  Mrs.  Blake  several  times  at  her  club 
while  she  was  getting  into  the  house,  but  he  had  not 
seen  Trix  and  he  had  heard  nothing  of  her  beyond  the 
slightest  allusions  from  her  mother. 

Kate  came  in  from  the  back  part  of  the  room.  It 
struck  him  as  a  surprise  that  the  hair  which  made  a 
full  frame  to  her  forehead  was  so  white.  The  grasp  of 
her  hand  was  very  friendly. 

"It  is  admirable,"  she  said,  as  they  sat  down  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  fireplace.  Stephen  flushed  with 
pleasure.  "The  year  in  Switzerland  is  astonishingly 
well  done;  it  quite  surprised  me."  She  paused.  "As 
to  the  earlier  part,  I  never  saw  my  mother-in-law,  but 
I  should  think  you  had  understood  her  wonderfully. 
We  were  married  in  the  spring;  we  put  off  going  to 
Cornwall  till  the  winter  and  she  died  rather  suddenly. 
Horace  arrived  just  too  late.  Then  Mary  Blake  came 
to  stay  with  us.  I  don't  think  you  have  given  quite  a 
living  impression  of  her.  She  was  very  like  Trix;  I 
see  the  likeness  constantly.  The  Celtic  strain  was 
strong  in  Mary.  If  only  she  had  been  brought  up 
under  different  influences  earlier  in  her  life  she  might 

339 


34°  Horace    BlaKe 

have  been  a  very  remarkable  woman.  She  gave  her- 
self whole-heartedly  to  the  ideal  that  had  been  put 
before  her.  She  became  a  nun,  and  she  died  quite 
young.  Horace  always  said  that  it  was  the  life  that 
killed  her."  Mrs.  Blake's  voice  quivered.  "Her 
going  had  a  terrible  effect  on  Horace;  it  raised  the 
wildest  element  in  him.  It  was  as  if  some  part  of  his 
nature  had  been  brutally  rent  away.  They  made  her 
think  that  she  could  still  be  intimate  with  her  brother 
and  have  much  influence  over  him.  But  he  warned 
her  that  he  would  never  see  her  again  and  he  never 
did." 

This  was  deeply  interesting  to  Stephen,  but  Trix 
had  been  alluded  to  and  he  was  anxious  to  bring  her 
back  to  Mrs.  Blake's  mind. 

"When  Mary  was  dying,"  Kate  continued,  "she 
wrote  to  me  and  asked  me  to  persuade  Horace  to  go 
and  see  her.  I  did  try" — this  a  little  defiantly — "it 
was  of  no  use.  He  was  hard  as  iron  about  her  by 
then." 

"Was  she  like  Miss  Trix  in  the  face?"  ventured 
Stephen. 

"Very,  only  her  eyes  were  lighter.  There  is  some 
blue  in  Trix's  eyes  underneath  the  brown.  Mary's 
were  clear  blue." 

"What  does — "  he  hesitated.  "What  does  Miss 
Blake  think  of  these  chapters?" 

Mrs.  Blake  turned  slowly  away  from  the  fire. 

"She  has  not  seen  them,"  she  said;  "no  one  has 
seen  them  but  myself." 

There  was  a  silence  that  Stephen  began  to  find 
embarrassing.  It  was  broken  by  Mrs.  Blake. 

"I  think  you  will  find  interesting,"  she  said,  "an 
article  I  turned  up  the  other  day.  I  never  knew  who 


Horace    BlaKe  341 

wrote  it.  '  Ibsen  and  Blake '  was  the  title,  and  it  went 
to  disprove  the  absurd  popular  idea  of  Ibsen's  influence 
on  my  husband." 

Just  then  the  door  opened  and  Trix  came  in. 
Stephen  started  as  if  it  had  been  matter  for  surprise 
to  see  her  in  her  mother's  house.  She  was  dressed  in 
grey  with  white  fur  and  a  black  hat.  He  was  not  quite 
sure  that  he  liked  her  to  look  so  fashionable,  though 
there  was  a  certain  reserve  even  in  that.  Trix  had 
known  he  was  there;  she  greeted  him  as  a  friend,  but 
perhaps  a  not  very  intimate  one.  He  would  have 
given  a  good  deal  to  be  at  his  ease.  Trix  turned  at 
once  to  Mrs.  Blake  and  spoke  quickly. 

"I  am  going  to  walk  to  the  Cunninghams  and  they 
will  take  me  on  to  the  meeting  with  them. " 

"Very  well,  I  will  join  you  there." 

"You  will  take  a  taxi,  mother?  It  is  so  cold,  and 
you  were  coughing  this  morning. " 

"  I  don't  think  it  will  hurt  me  to  go  by  the  Tube. " 

Trix  urged  the  taxi  again  and  appealed  to  Stephen 
to  confirm  her  view  of  the  weather.  At  last  Kate 
promised  and  a  moment  later  Trix  had  gone,  saying 
that  she  must  not  be  late  as  her  friends  were  lunching 
early  for  her  sake. 

As  Trix  left  the  room  Stephen  felt  Kate's  eyes  fixed 
upon  himself.  He  turned  over  the  papers  he  held  in 
his  hands.  He  marvelled  at  the  change  in  Trix;  the 
rather  self-confident  manner,  the  touch  of  the  woman 
of  the  world,  the  solicitude  for  her  mother.  He  had 
not  looked  her  full  in  the  face,  he  had  not  found  it 
possible.  But  he  had  known  that  there  was  no  sense 
of  special  comradeship  between  Trix  and  himself, 
while  there  was  a  sense  of  close  intimacy  between 
Trix  and  her  mother.  There  had  been  something 


342  Horace   BlaKe 

intense  in  her  voice  as  she  pressed  Mrs.  Blake  as  to 
the  taxi.  On  one  point  he  had  been  obviously  mis- 
taken. However  Mrs.  Blake  had  persuaded  Trix  to 
give  up  all  share  in  the  biography,  it  had  not  been 
done  with  any  cruelty  or  unkindness. 

Now  she  had  gone  and  Stephen  was  most  painfully 
preoccupied  with  the  thought  of  her;  it  was  not 
possible  for  him  to  pretend  that  he  wanted  Kate  to 
go  on  discussing  the  differences  between  Ibsen  and 
Horace  Blake. 

"I  think  she  is  looking  well,"  said  Kate. 

"Very, "  said  Stephen.  He  got  up.  "I  think  I  too 
must  be  off, "  he  said. 

Kate  rose.  She  looked  as  if  she  wanted  to  say  more 
and  her  lips  opened,  but  if  she  had  had  the  intention 
of  disburthening  herself  of  the  thought  that  seemed  to 
oppress  her,  she  changed  her  mind  and  merely  said: 
"Good-bye." 

She  shook  hands  warmly,  but  said  nothing  about 
his  coming  again.  He  was  sure  that  this  was  not  an 
intentional  lapse;  he  knew  that  she  wanted  to  speak 
further  of  Trix,  but  that  she  could  not. 

He  went  away  feeling  horribly  depressed,  and  then 
told  himself  he  was  absurdly  fanciful.  He  was  lunch- 
ing with  a  friend  who  had  made  him  promise  to  go 
with  her  to  a  Woman's  Suffrage  meeting  that  after- 
noon. His  friend,  Mrs.  John  Darcy,  was  not  a  suffra- 
gette as  yet;  she  was  on  the  brink,  which  made  her 
mental  condition  interesting  to  those  who  wanted  to 
encourage  her  to  take  the  plunge.  It  was  not  until 
they  had  actually  reached  the  small  hall  in  Kensington 
where  the  meeting  was  to  be  held  that  the  question 
of  the  suffrage  was  mentioned  between  them.  Mrs. 
Darcy  had  always  been  a  confirmed  play-goer  and 


Horace   BlaKe  343 

had  been  delighting  in  recollections  of  Blake's  plays, 
and  Stephen  would  much  rather  her  shrewd  comments 
had  not  been  interrupted  by  their  arrival  at  their 
destination.  The  meeting  had  begun  and  Mrs.  Darcy 
took  the  nearest  empty  seats  to  the  door.  There  had 
been  a  burst  of  applause  during  the  moment  while 
they  were  getting  into  their  places.  With  an  absurd 
feeling,  that  is  not  uncommon,  that  his  entrance 
would  interrupt  the  speaker  less  if  he  did  not  look  up, 
Stephen  kept  his  eyes  lowered.  The  applause  died 
down  and  a  woman's  clear  voice  penetrated  through 
the  hall.  Stephen  started.  The  speaker  was  Trix 
Blake. 

Standing  with  the  fingers  of  one  hand  lightly  touch- 
ing the  table,  bending  forward  a  little,  her  eyes  fixed 
on  some  point  behind  them  in  the  hall,  Trix  was  soon 
exciting  another  round  of  applause.  There  was  pain 
in  the  voice,  and  at  the  first  moment  the  pathos  of  her 
young  face  was  intolerable  to  him;  presently  the 
sharp  note  of  revolt  hurt  him  in  a  different  way. 
This  was  what  she  was  saying : 

"Men  have  ranked  it  as  the  highest  virtue  in 
women  to  forgive  the  offences  they  have  committed 
against  them.  But  they  have  been  proud  of  the  men 
who  could  not  forgive  unfaithfulness  in  woman.  Men 
have  taught  women  to  believe  that  wives  should 
kneel  in  thankfulness  before  the  men  who  are  faithful 
to  them,  but  what  man  feels  any  gratitude  to  the 
woman  who  has  been  faithful  to  him? 

"Women  have  acted  up  to  the  code  that  has  been 
taught  them.  They,  by  reason  of  their  ignorance, 
were  powerless  in  the  hands  of  men,  and  they  often 
loved  their  masters,  sometimes  from  an  instinct  of 
self-defence,  sometimes  because  men  had  not  abused 


344  Horace    BlaKe 

all  the  power  in  their  hands.  That  is  the  love  of  a 
bondwoman.  Man  had  not  learnt,  has  not  yet  learnt, 
what  is  the  love  of  a  freed- woman. " 

Rounds  and  rounds  of  applause.  Stephen  felt 
petrified.  Mrs.  Darcy  turned  to  him  with  a  smile. 

"My  poor  dear  John!"  she  said. 

Then  he  saw  that  Mrs.  Blake  was  sitting  not  far 
from  them;  her  face  was  white  and  set.  She  leant 
forward  once,  as  if  moved  by  some  sudden  thought, 
and  then  sat  as  upright  as  before. 

Trix  went  on  flowingly  much  on  the  same  lines.  It 
was  reminiscent  of  Stuart  Mill  for  a  time,  then  she 
launched  into  figures  as  to  the  comparative  wages  of 
men  and  women,  after  which  she  denounced  the  fac- 
tory laws  made  nominally  for  the  protection  of 
women,  but  in  reality  framed  to  handicap  them  in 
their  competition  with  men.  She  might  be  superficial, 
but  she  was  wonderfully  lucid,  and  at  moments 
picturesque,  as  in  giving  a  recent  instance  of  a  man's 
cruelty  to  his  wife.  But  through  it  all  Stephen  felt 
with  horrible  clearness  the  drama  of  Trix's  own  soul. 

From  the  child  as  he  had  first  seen  her  not  a  year 
ago,  bending  over  Horace  Blake  as  he  lay  on  the 
invalid  chair,  to  this  strange,  weird  little  orator  with 
her  shining  eyes,  what  a  change! 

All  round  him  he  heard  murmurs  of  applause. 

"Is  n't  she  magnificent?" 

"  She  is  the  best  we  have  had  for  ever  so  long. " 

"Yes;  she  is  Horace  Blake's  daughter;  she  gets  her 
genius  from  him." 

"She  must  have  learnt  a  great  deal  from  him." 

Stephen  repeated  the  words  to  himself. 

"Learnt  a  great  deal  from  him!"  Yes,  that  was 
true.  She  had  learnt  from  knowing  him  the  expe- 


Horace  BlaKe  345 

rience  of  an  ideal  ending  in  disillusion;  she  had  had 
her  faith  wrecked  and  her  hopes  crushed.  He  did  not 
know  what  Mrs.  Blake  and  Anne  had  done  to  her, 
but  he  knew  that  they  had  killed  the  Trix  with  whom 
he  had  watched  great  sunsets  and  talked  of  Horace 
Blake. 

"  'The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them,'  "  he 
thought.  Nothing  to  him  could  illustrate  the  child's 
theme  of  woman's  suffering  better  than  herself.  The 
matter  of  her  speech  had  been  read  up  in  handbooks ; 
there  was  little  that  was  original;  it  was  like  the 
matter  prepared  for  election  speeches  in  its  tricky 
superficiality,  but  the  soul  of  the  speech  was  the 
agony  that  had  passed  over  Trix's  head  and  under 
which  she  was  still  submerged. 

"  Can  no  one  save  our  girls  from  this  sort  of  thing?  " 
asked  Mrs.  Darcy  as  Trix,  colouring  deeply,  alluded 
in  veiled  language  to  the  horrors  of  the  London 
streets.  "She  won't  blush  when  she  has  done  it  half 
a  dozen  times." 

At  last  Trix  came  to  her  conclusion. 

"We  have  behind  us,"  she  said,  "centuries  of  dark- 
ness, of  oppression,  the  cries  of  the  bought  slave,  the 
imprisoned  wife,  the  deserted  mother,  the  low  moan 
of  those  who  have  given  love  and  forgiveness  and  life 
itself  to  those  who  did  not  value  their  gifts.  All  these 
sounds — and  there  are  notes  of  awful  torture  among 
them — ring  in  our  ears,  but  we  must  not  let  them 
overwhelm  us.  We  have  to  look  forward,  we  must 
not  despair  of  humanity.  Women  are  awake  to-day 
as  they  have  never  been  awake  before.  There  is  a 
solidarity  amongst  them  unknown  in  the  past,  and 
that  presages  great  things  in  the  future.  History  will 
have  much  to  tell  of  the  women  of  to-day.  It  will  be 


346  Horace    BlaKe 

no  small  thing  if  it  can  tell  of  us  that  we  went  forward, 
pitiful  but  undismayed,  making  any  sacrifice  that 
we  were  called  upon  to  make,  to  set  free  the  souls  and 
bodies  of  half  the  human  race. " 

She  sat  down  amidst  as  much  applause  as  the 
crowd  of  women  and  the  handful  of  men  scattered 
among  them  could  produce. 

Then  she  rose  again,  and  her  voice  sounded  weak 
and  exhausted.  "I  forgot  to  move  the  resolution." 
She  then  moved  the  resolution  that  the  meeting 
approved  of  the  grant  of  the  parliamentary  franchise 
to  women.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  made  any 
mention  of  the  franchise. 

Stephen,  hastily  explaining  his  object  to  Mrs. 
Darcy,  rose  and  made  his  way  to  Mrs.  Blake. 

"How  wonderfully  well  she  spoke!" 

Mrs.  Blake  raised  her  tired  eyes  to  his. 

"I  dislike  it  so  intensely  that  I  don't  suppose  I  can 
judge  of  it  fairly. " 

Stephen  took  the  empty  chair  next  to  her  while  a 
gloomy-looking  young  man  began  his  speech.  Kate 
went  on  speaking  as  if  words  were  a  relief. 

"It  is  even  worse  than  I  thought  it  would  be,"  she 
said.  "I  refused  to  come  before.  Burke  said  you 
could  not  bring  an  indictment  against  a  whole  nation ; 
it  's  more  preposterous  to  bring  it  against  a  whole  sex. 
Then  it  is  such  a  grotesque  account  of  the  relations  of 
men  and  women.  They  make  a  child  like  Trix  put 
all  the  blame  of  the  suffering  of  one-half  of  humanity 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  other.  Have  not  men  done  as 
much  to  relieve  the  sufferings  of  women  as  women 
have  done  to  relieve  the  sufferings  of  men?" 

"I  can't  talk  about  it  at  all,"  said  Stephen.  "It 
seems  to  me  that  to  attempt  to  judge  human  nature 


Horace    BlaKe  347 

like  that  you  must  be  superhuman.  I  'm  not  up  to 
the  job.  But  Heaven  knows  what  the  House  of 
Commons  can  do  to  put  the  world  to  rights!" 

His  eyes  were  fixed  on  Trix,  who  drooped  on  her  chair. 

"  It  must  tire  her  very  much. " 

"Yes,  but  it  is  an  enormous  interest.  I  let  it  begin 
because  I  thought  the  interest  good  for  her.  Of 
course,  'a  cause'  is  a  delightful  thing  in  life,  but 
now  ..." 

They  felt  that  they  had  spoken  as  much  as  they 
ought,  while  the  poor  young  man  was  trying  to  bring 
Trix's  flights  to  bear  on  the  question  of  the  vote  for 
women.  Stephen  went  back  to  Mrs.  Darcy  as  soon 
as  the  speech  was  finished. 

"Well,  I  am  an  anti-suffragette  at  this  moment," 
she  said,  "and  shall  probably  remain  so  until  I  go  to 
an  anti-suffragette  meeting,  when  someone  will  talk 
against  women's  brains,  which  is  a  thing  I  can't 
stand.  We  are  too  clever  by  half;  only  education  is 
making  some  of  us  stupid,  and  the  stupidest  thing 
women  can  do  is  to  tell  men  that  they  are  slaves.  I 
only  hope  men  won't  take  advantage  of  it. " 

Stephen  hardly  listened  to  anything  she  said,  and 
he  was  profoundly  uninterested  in  the  taking  of  the 
vote  which  followed;  he  was  too  anxious  to  get  Mrs. 
Darcy  into  a  taxi  and  off  his  hands,  so  that  he  might 
come  back  and  see  Trix  if  only  for  a  moment.  Mrs. 
Darcy  only  realised  that  he  was  not  coming  with  her 
as  he  shut  the  door  of  the  taxi,  and  she  nodded  a 
hasty  "good-bye." 

Stephen  flew  up  the  steps  back  to  the  hall,  which  was 
already  beginning  to  empty.  He  saw  Trix  at  once. 
She  was  standing  near  the  door  selling  literature  with 
the  cordial  exalted  manner  of  a  religious  missionary. 


348  Horace   BlaKe 

"Yes,"  he  heard  her  say,  "  Woman  a  Few  Shrieks, 
is  a  shilling;  The  Human  Woman  is  more  expensive." 

Stephen  came  close  to  her,  but  she  did  not  see  him. 
Two  or  three  girls  were  talking  to  her  all  together. 

"You  were  too  wonderful,  Trix. " 

"Let  me  sell  the  literature,  darling;  you  must  get 
your  tea. " 

"She  must  get  some  tea  at  once;  she  looks  so 
white. " 

"I  '11  come  in  a  moment,"  said  Trix  kindly,  with  a 
faint  touch  of  patronage.  Then  she  saw  Stephen. 
She  turned  to  him  with  just  the  same  tired,  cordial 
manner.  ' '  Can  I  sell  you  any  of  these,  Mr.  Tempest  ? ' ' 
and  then,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  in  the  cheerful, 
kindly  tone  of  the  canvasser,  "I  hope  you  are  quite 
sound?" 

"Sound  on  the  vote?"  asked  Stephen,  while  his 
eyes  sought  hers,  almost  threatening  in  his  anxiety. 
"Oh,  no,  I'm  not!" 

"Then  you  must  be  converted,"  said  Trix,  and  the 
admiring  group  murmured  assent.  Suddenly  her  look 
changed,  and  there  was  a  moment  of  undisguised 
human  feeling  between  them. 

Terrible  suffering  spoke  out  of  Trix's  glance,  and 
an  appeal  for  sympathy  that  wrung  his  heart. 

Then  she  gave  a  little  laugh  and  looked  round. 

"  I  am  too  tired  to  convert  anybody  now, "  she  said. 
"Who  spoke  of  tea?" 

She  bowed  to  Stephen  as  she  handed  the  literature 
to  a  girl  near  her,  and  he  knew  that  he  was  dismissed. 
A  few  moments  later  from  the  other  side  of  the  street 
he  saw  a  group  of  girls  turn  into  a  tea-shop.  It  was 
Trix  and  her  devoted  followers. 


Ill 

NANCY  POTTER'S  PICTURE 

MRS.  GEORGE  SHENSTONE  was  saying  "  good- 
night" to  her  dinner-party.  The  dinner-party 
had  sat  down  thirteen  souls  in  all,  and  Trix  Blake  was 
the  missing  fourteenth.  Trix,  who  had  lived  in  a 
whirl  of  meetings  for  three  weeks  since  the  day  on 
which  Stephen  had  heard  her  speak,  was  taking  the 
chair  at  a  debate,  regardless  of  her  engagement  to 
dine  out. 

Mrs.  Shenstone  knew  that  to  be  a  suffragette  was 
demoralising,  but  she  had  hardly  expected  that 
demoralisation  to  stretch  so  far  as  to  make  a  girl  to 
whom  she  had  been  particularly  kind  throw  out  her 
table  at  the  last  moment,  and  this  because  she  had 
been  asked  to  chair  a  debate  at  an  hour's  notice. 
Dinner-parties  are  the  foundation  of  society,  and  are, 
of  course,  sacred  in  all  sets;  but  they  were  far  the 
most  serious  work  Mrs.  Shenstone  had  in  life  as  a 
wife  and  as  a  woman. 

George  Shenstone  was  very  angry — he  had  often 
said  that  she  ought  never  to  ask  less  than  sixteen 
people  for  fear  of  such  an  accident — so  angry  that 
their  usual  roles  were  reversed,  and  she  was  really 
afraid  of  being  alone  with  him. 

"Do  stay  and  have  a  talk,"  she  said  in  her  low, 
metallic  voice,  as  Stephen  Tempest  made  his  way 
towards  her  to  say  "good-night,"  and  Stephen,  with- 
out hesitation,  stayed.  It  had  been  a  fearfully  dreary 

349  . 


35°  Horace   BlaKe 

dinner  for  him.  He  rather  liked  good  things  to  eat 
and  drink,  and  the  Shenstones'  edible  and  drinkable 
things  were  superb.  But  they  were  some  of  the  same 
people,  and  all  of  the  same  set,  as  the  house-party  in 
the  Highlands — men  who  could  talk  of  a  "twang"  in 
port  and  women  who  could  discourse  of  their  tailors, 
directly  in  face  of  the  sunset  over  the  loch.  Their 
gross  materialism  stank  in  Stephen's  nostrils  to- 
night, as  he  told  himself.  George  Shenstone  was 
nearly  as  angry  with  him  for  his  insufferable  manners 
as  he  was  with  Trix  for  not  coming.  It  was  natural 
that  Tempest  should  be  annoyed  at  Trix  not  turning 
up,  but  that  was  no  reason  for  giving  himself  such 
airs;  and  Shenstone  knew  the  difference  between 
mere  disappointment  and  bad  temper. 

It  seemed  to  Stephen  that  he  was  at  the  end  of  his 
tether  when  he  got  upstairs,  and  that  he  should  break 
loose  in  some  way  and  do  something  odd.  Bridge 
was  a  relief;  they  played  till  midnight,  and  therefore 
it  was  very  late  when  Mrs.  Shenstone  and  Stephen 
sat  down  alone.  George  Shenstone  was  sulking  in 
the  smoking-room  downstairs.  It  was  some  comfort 
to  him  that  Tempest  had  lost  money. 

Mrs.  Shenstone  drew  her  turquoise  velvet  skirt  to 
one  side,  and  put  her  elaborate  blue-and-gold  shoes 
on  the  fender.  Stephen  wondered  as  usual  as  she  bent 
her  head  who  was  her  wig  maker,  and  what  his  age 
must  be  by  now. 

He  was  not  surprised  by  her  first  question. 

"Have  you  seen  Trix  lately?"  she  asked. 

"I  heard  her  speak  at  a  meeting." 

"Detestable  nonsense!  I  can't  think  what  Kate 
Blake  is  about. " 

"Her  mother  hates  it, "  said  Stephen. 


Horace    BlaKe  351 

Mrs.  Shenstone  pressed  the  coils  of  a  great  diamond 
serpent  that  crawled  over  the  region  of  her  heart. 

"Well,  I  suppose  she  has  lost  all  control  over  Trix. 
I  was  never  so  disappointed  in  a  girl  in  my  life ;  it  must 
be  Horace  Blake  coming  out  in  her.  Probably  she 
won't  marry.  What  man  in  his  senses  would  marry 
a  girl  who  talks  indecencies  in  public?" 

"She  does  not  talk  indecencies,"  said  Stephen 
hotly. 

"Well,  you  may  not  call  them  indecencies.  I  do, 
and  so  did  my  mother  before  me.  How  long  ago  is  it 
since  you  heard  her  speak?" 

"  Nearly  three  weeks. " 

"And  you  have  not  seen  her  since  then?" 

"  Yes;  I  have  seen  her  just  four  times,  but  never  for 
more  than  a  moment — twice  at  her  mother's  house, 
and  twice  we  have  met  (but  each  time  in  a  crowd)  at 
a  party." 

"Trix  has  been  avoiding  you.  I  thought  so  from 
the  way  she  answered  me  when  I  asked  her  when  she 
had  seen  you.  She  said  you  were  both  too  busy  to  see 
much  of  each  other.  That  was  obviously  absurd." 
Then,  after  the  briefest  pause,  Mrs.  Shenstone  said 
abruptly : 

"  I  have  been  wanting  to  talk  to  you.  I  must  know 
about  Horace  Blake's  Life. "  Her  tone  was  imperious. 

Stephen  stared  at  her. 

"Why  are  you  anxious  about  it?" 

She  looked  round  at  him  with  her  shallow  grey-blue 
eyes.  She  was  evidently  capable  of  being  more 
natural,  but  also  harder  than  he  had  thought. 

"I  must  know  what  will  come  out  about  Nancy 
Potter. " 

"Nancy  Potter?"  echoed  Stephen  blankly.    Some- 


352  Horace  BlaKe 

body  else — was  it  Hales,  by  the  bye? — had  asked  him 
what  he  knew  about  Nancy  Potter. 

"Nancy  Potter,"  Mrs.  Shenstone  went  on,  "was 
my  stepfather's  daughter,  and  therefore" — her  tone 
was  emphatic — "no  relation  of  mine.  At  the  same 
time,  I  do  think  I  ought  to  be  told  what  will  come  out 
about  her  in  Horace  Blake's  Life. " 

Mrs.  Shenstone  got  up  from  the  low  chair,  shook 
her  train  a  little  carefully,  and  with  a  dramatic  move- 
ment seated  herself  opposite  Stephen. 

"It  is  right  that  you  should  know  the  truth  about 
Horace  Blake,"  she  said. 

Was  it  possible,  he  wondered,  that  there  was  any- 
thing he  did  not  know  already  about  Blake?  why  he 
walked  about  weighted  with  Blake's  iniquities. 

"I  know  that  Nancy  Potter  acted  in  his  plays." 

"She  was  a  great  actress,  but  she  was  only  great 
because  Horace  Blake  developed  her.  He  made  her 
great.  She  was  an  intense  Methodist,  gentle,  quiet — 
goody-goody,  we  thought  her.  I  don't  think  he  was 
in  love  with  her,  but  he  made  her  act  in  his  plays,  and 
then  he  set  to  work  to  see  if  she  would  keep  good  or 
not.  He  threw  her  with  men  who  charmed  other 
women,  and  when  that  failed,  he  tried  himself.  He 
wanted  a  demure  Puritan  for  a  play;  a  Puritan  who 
would  fall  in  the  end.  He  wrote  parts  at  first  for  her 
as  the  unfallen  Puritan."  Mrs.  Shenstone's  eyes 
glittered  as  she  looked  at  him.  "  At  last  he  succeeded, 
and  she  fell,  and  then  he  wrote  a  play  about  the  fallen 
Puritan,  and  he  made  her  act  that  play  too.  She  did 
it  for  three  months,  and  then  she  went  away.  She 
went  to  New  York  and  acted  there  for  three  weeks, 
and  then  she  went  farther  away,  and  the  oddest  part 
of  the  story  was  that  Kate  Blake  went  to  New  York 


Horace    Blake  353 

with  her  and  out  West  with  her,  and  was  with  her 
when  she  died.  Kate  Blake  is  the  greatest  woman  I 
have  ever  known.  I  saw  Nancy — Nancy  Potter  was 
her  professional  name,  but  I  would  rather  only  call 
her  that — I  saw  Nancy  before  she  went  away,  and 
felt  sure  that  she  would  die  unless  Kate  Blake  should 
prove  to  be  too  much  for  her,  and  should  make  her 
live." 

"What  year  was  it  that  she  died?" 

"  Eighteen  years  ago.  Nobody  remembers  her  now, 
and  Kate  saved  her  good  name.  It  must  be  kept  safe 
now. " 

"  That  is  why  Mrs.  Blake  has  told  me  nothing  of  the 
hideous  story.  There  are  letters  about  Mrs.  Blake 
going  to  America,  and  Trix  being  born  out  West. 
Mrs.  Blake  was  very  brave." 

He  was  staring  into  the  fire,  and  Mrs.  Shenstone's 
hard  eyes  were  gleaming  with  excitement,  and  she 
loved  excitement. 

"I  have  a  miniature  of  Nancy  Potter.  I  keep  it 
locked  up.  I  will  show  it  to  you. " 

Before  the  faded,  rather  poor  miniature  was  put 
into  his  hand  Stephen  understood.  He  understood 
before  Mrs.  Shenstone  had  unlocked  her  bureau.  As 
she  passed  him  to  go  into  the  back  drawing-room,  his 
present  surroundings  became  dim  to  him,  and  he  was 
again  with  the  father  and  daughter  standing  on  white 
sand  and  looking  out  to  sea.  Trix  had  her  arm 
through  her  father's;  she  was  looking  at  him  with 
worshipping,  protecting  love,  and  his  whole  face  was 
full  of  light  as  he  made  some  little  joke  to  her.  Even 
when  Mrs.  Shenstone's  stiff  figure  in  light  blue  velvet, 
with  all  the  trappings  that  by  no  means  concealed 
the  hard  nature  of  the  woman  beneath  them,  stood 
23 


354  Horace   BlaKe 

close  to  him  holding  out  the  miniature,  he  hardly 
saw  her. 

He  only  saw  Horace  and  Trix;  and  at  first  he  could 
not  judge  of  the  miniature.  It  simply  seemed  to  him 
to  be  the  wretched  copy  of  a  poor  photograph  with  no 
sort  of  individuality.  Mrs.  Shenstone  had  sat  down 
and  fixed  her  eyes  steadily  on  him.  He  caught  their 
look  and  tried  to  steady  his  attention.  He  could  not 
refuse  to  see  the  likeness.  Trix  was  much  more  like 
Mary  Blake  and  Horace  than  she  was  like  the  Metho- 
dist Nancy  Potter.  And  yet  there  was  a  likeness — • 
the  shape  of  the  head,  the  way  it  was  set  on  the  neck, 
the  sloping  shoulders.  Eighteen  years  ago  this  woman 
had  died  out  West,  and  eighteen  years  ago  Trix  had 
been  born  out  West,  and  Kate  Blake  had  brought 
home  the  baby  who  grew  up  with  not  the  faintest 
resemblance  to  herself.  Of  two  things  he  felt  con- 
vinced at  once — that  Kate  had  never  betrayed  her 
own  secret  to  Trix,  and  yet  that  Trix  had  found  it  out. 
He  hardly  knew  how  the  next  moments  passed  or  how 
he  said  "good-night"  to  Mrs.  Shenstone.  He  walked 
away  from  the  house  looking  dazed  as  the  clock 
struck  one  from  a  neighbouring  church. 

The  thought  of  Trix's  suffering  filled  his  mind,  the 
awful  irony  of  the  fact  that  had  been  known  to 
Horace  Blake  and  not  to  her  while  she  was  loving  and 
tending  her  father  at  the  end.  She  was  only  eighteen, 
and  she  had  developed  so  rapidly;  the  child  he  had 
seen  first  could  not  have  written  that  wonderful 
paper  which  she  had  written  only  a  few  months  later. 
And  now  this  dreadful  parody  of  heroism  in  a  great 
cause;  this  horrid,  unnatural  strength  of  revolt,  was 
the  fever  that  had  followed  the  shock  of  that  hideous 
revelation.  The  only  comfort  in  it  all  was  her  new 


Horace   BlaKe  355 

devotion  to  the  woman  whom  she  now  knew  was  not 
her  mother.  Stephen  glowed  with  admiration  of 
those  two,  but  he  hated  Blake  as  he  had  never  hated 
him  before.  He  could  not  go  to  bed,  and  he  sat  with 
a  cigarette  that  he  forgot  to  light  for  nearly  half  an 
hour  contemplating  the  red  embers  of  his  dying  fire. 

Even  the  most  vivid  letters  that  showed  the  vile 
passages  strewn  through  the  years  of  Horace's  life  did 
not  affect  Stephen  with  as  much  horror  as  did  this  one 
sin  that  had  borne  such  terrible  fruit.  How  on  earth 
had  Mrs.  Blake  and  Trix  lived  through  these  months 
at  all?  No  doubt  Mrs.  Blake  had  been  right  in  think- 
ing it  a  good  thing  for  Trix  to  have  a  cause.  He  loved 
Trix's  courage,  loved  the  way  in  which  she  had  carried 
her  head  bravely,  and  not  bowed  it  in  any  false  shame. 
It  was  a  difficult  task  he  had  before  him,  but  he  was 
certain  now  that  if  he  were  too  poor  to  be  a  good 
match,  it  would  yet  be  no  selfish  thing  to  marry  her. 
How  could  they  be  safe  as  to  this  secret?  And  what 
would  be  the  consequences  to  Trix  if  it  got  known, 
and  she  saw  that  it  was  known?  He  felt  that  there 
was  such  a  tension  about  Trix  now  that  anything 
might  prove  the  one  unendurable  last  touch.  He 
wished  she  had  become  a  Roman  Catholic — any  influ- 
ence would  be  safer  than  to  be  absolutely  rudderless, 
driven  into  any  current  by  the  passion  of  revolt 
against  the  fact  of  her  own  existence.  He  felt  as  one 
might  feel  towards  a  sick  child  in  the  street — simply 
longing  to  get  it  into  warmth  and  shelter,  and  give  it 
the  chance  of  healing.  But  what  if  this  child  would 
choose  rather  to  be  out  alone,  ill  and  cold,  than  to 
come  into  the  loving  shelter  prepared  for  her? 


IV 
NO;  IT'S  NO  USE 

TRIX  was  tired,  but  excited.  She  welcomed  the 
quiver  of  her  nerves,  the  tingle  of  excitement 
that  followed  a  successful  speech.  Then  she  had 
dared  much  the  night  before  in  throwing  over  the 
Shenstones'  dinner  for  the  cause,  and  she  had  suc- 
ceeded in  avoiding  Stephen  Tempest.  Mrs.  Blake 
had  been  away ;  she  had  gone  down  for  a  night  to  see 
Anne  Coniston,  who  was  going  to  spend  the  rest  of  the 
winter  abroad.  The  sun  was  full  on  her  mother's 
sitting-room,  and  Trix,  having  gone  there  to  find  the 
morning  papers,  sat  down  in  the  sunshine  to  read 
them  by  her  mother's  fire.  She  hardly  ever  sat  still 
now  for  more  than  a  few  moments.  There  was  always 
some  little  thing  or  other  to  do  connected  with  the 
"cause."  What  she  did  not  realise,  and  what  dis- 
turbed Kate  who  did  realise  it,  was  that  when  there 
really  was  nothing  to  do,  Trix  moved  incessantly  from 
one  chair  to  another,  or  sat  suddenly  on  the  rug,  and 
then  lay  on  the  sofa,  and  a  second  later  would  be  bolt 
upright  on  a  little  stool.  She  had  a  cigarette  con- 
stantly in  her  hand,  and  held  it  in  curiously  the  same 
way  her  father  had  held  his.  This  morning  she  read 
the  suffrage  news  eagerly,  and  then  gathered  up  her 
letters  that  had  fallen  on  the  ground  when  she  sat 
down.  She  heard  the  door  open  behind  her.  Instead 
of  the  servant  she  expected  to  see,  Stephen  Tempest 
came  in.  Her  face  for  a  moment  showed  that  she  was 

356 


Horace    BlaKe  357 

surprised  and  annoyed;  she  made  no  sign.  Stephen 
crossed  to  the  hearth-rug  in  a  stride,  and  looked  tall 
and  stiff  as  he  stood  there. 

"Mrs.  Blake  told  me  to  come  and  fetch  some 
diaries  she  keeps  here  if  I  wanted  them." 

Trix  jumped  up,  and  in  her  new  company  manner 
said  that  she  was  just  off  and  would  not  disturb  him. 

"I  wish  you  would  not  try  to  be  civil,  "  said  Stephen, 
with  a  faint  attempt  at  humour,  looking  sadly  at  the 
rug  on  which  he  stood. 

"Was  I  civil?  "  asked  Trix  lightly.    "  I  apologise.  " 

"I  think  that  is  the  most  trying  part  of  the  treat- 
ment," he  said,  trying  to  keep  to  the  same  tone. 
"Whatever  I  deserve,"  he  looked  up  at  the  big 
window  to  his  left,  "I  think  I  might  be  spared  that.  " 

There  was  a  certain  strength  in  his  attitude  as  he 
stood  there. 

"What  nonsense!"  said  Trix. 

"Exactly,"  said  Stephen;  "I  do  think  it  is  non- 
sense. " 

"What  are  you  talking  about?" 

"By  'it,'  I  referred  to  the  civility  with  which  you 
treat  me.  We  might  have  been  introduced  to  each 
other  a  few  days  ago.  " 

"It  is  only  that  I  am  busy  and  you  are  busy, 


"Civility  does  not  really  save  time,  you  see,"  said 
Stephen;  "because  the  people  whom  we  used  to  treat 
as  friends  demand  explanations,  and  that  takes  up 
time." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean.  " 

"Yes,  you  do." 

Stephen's  voice  was  now  simply  weary  and  sad. 
Trix  noticed  it,  but  hardened  herself.  Still  she  evi- 


358  Horace   BlaKe 

dently  could  not  get  away.  She  took  up  her  letters 
from  the  table  on  which  she  had  put  them  a  few 
minutes  ago,  and  holding  them  in  her  hand  as  a  pro- 
test, sat  down  on  a  low  chair  by  the  bureau. 

"What  is  it?  Why  do  you  avoid  me  as  you  do? 
and  when  you  fail  to  escape  you  are — well,  I  won't 
call  it  anything  but  civil.  But  I  am  sure  I  enjoy  our 
meetings  no  more  than  you  do,  and  it  is  a  pity — if  I 
am  right  and  we  were  really  friends  so  short  a  time 
ago,  in — in  the  Highlands." 

"That  was  years  ago, "  said  Trix. 

And  he  felt  as  if  the  mask  had  fallen  for  a  moment, 
but  he  dared  not  look  at  her. 

"Trix,"  he  said  suddenly,  "has  this  suffrage  busi- 
ness so  entered  into  your  soul,  into  the  marrow  of  your 
bones,  that  you  have  no  pity?"  He  tried  to  speak 
lightly  again  now.  "  No  mercy  on  a  mere  man. " 

"I  don't  see  that  men  have  much  to  be  pitied  for; 
they  can  do  what  they  like. " 

"How  strange  that  must  sound  to  the  Eternal 
Powers,"  he  said  sadly. 

"Are  there  any  Eternal  Powers?"  asked  Trix. 

"I  thought  so,"  said  Stephen.  "Well,  then,  you 
think  that  we  are  all-powerful  and  have  made  the  bad 
world  what  it  is.  Men  are  evil  gods.  But  now  take 
me  as  a  concrete  instance  if  you  can  condescend  to  do 
so;  am  I  powerful?  Have  I  done  much  to  make  this 
poor  world  go  wrong?  Am  I  an  evil  god?  Am  I 
happy?  You  know  I  am  not  happy !" 

"I  did  not  mean  you,"  said  Trix,  "of  course." 

"No;  this  specimen  does  not  suit  the  theory.  I  am 
not  happy.  I  don't  believe  you  are  happy,  and  you 
won't  make  yourself  any  happier  by  being  unkind  to 
me.  But  don't  try  to  deceive  yourself,  Trix.  You 


Horace    BlaKe  359 

know  perfectly  well  why  I  am  unhappy,  and  if  you 
choose  to  ignore  me  the  thought  of  me  will  haunt  you. 
You  can't  help  that — that  much  of  evil  eye  I  do  possess 
— you  won't  be  able  to  hurt  me  without  my  hurting 
you.  I  repeat  it  because  I  want  you  to  understand 
it." 

He  still  looked  at  the  window,  and  he  spoke  low 
and  with  all  the  sadness  that  last  night  had  brought 
on  him. 

"While  you  are  speaking  of  the  abstract,  all- 
powerful  man  who  has  held  throughout  the  ages  the 
abstract,  delicate,  pure  woman  in  his  horrid  grasp,  you 
won't  be  able  to  forget  that  there  is  a  poor  sort  of  man 
who  suffers  too,  though  you  won't  understand  why, 
or  how  much,  from  being  in  your  grasp.  The  audience 
will  applaud,  but  you  will  be  haunted." 

Trix  did  not  look  up.  He  had  gained  in  force  from 
the  fact  that  he  had  calculated  every  word,  so  as  to 
keep  them  both  off  the  edges  of  the  precipice,  and 
there  were  many  ways  to  the  edge  of  it  that  might 
have  proved  fatal.  He  thought  he  had  kept  safely 
away  from  the  faintest  betrayal  of  the  pity  that  he 
was  fighting  down  as  he  saw  her  pick  a  little  with 
white  shaking  fingers  at  her  skirt.  He  must  wake  no 
reminiscence  of  her  father.  He  only  wanted  to  give 
her  and  himself  the  chance  of  breaking  their  bonds,  and 
being  to  each  other  what  he  believed  they  were  meant 
to  be.  He  turned  aside,  knelt  down  by  the  book-case, 
and  took  out  of  the  shelf  the  two  volumes  he  wanted. 
Then  he  stood  for  a  moment  with  them  in  his  hand. 

"It 's  no  use  to  go  on  talking,  is  it,  Trix?" 

There  was  a  yearning  inquiry  in  his  tone  now. 
She  did  not  answer. 

"Is  it  of  any  use?" 


360  Horace   BlaKe 

Trix  was  staring  at  the  ground  at  her  feet.  She 
raised  her  eyes  and  saw  above  Stephen's  head  the 
face  of  Horace  Blake  in  Surot's  picture. 

"No;  it 's  no  use. "  Her  eyes  were  cold  and  bright, 
and  her  voice  hard. 

"I  think  it  was  right  to  do  it  now, "  said  Stephen  to 
himself,  as  he  walked  down  Eccleston  Square;  "but 
it  was  a  little  hard  on  me.  Poor  darling!  May  the 
God  she  has  rejected  bless  her ;  no  one  else  can  do  any 
good." 


I  LIVE  NOW  FOR  THE  CAUSE  OF  WOMEN 

AT  past  twelve  o'clock  that  night  Trix,  who  had 
slept  for  half  an  hour,  woke  up  with  dry,  burn- 
ing eyes  and  looked  about  her.  The  fire  was  giving 
out  one  bright  little  flame,  and  by  it  Kate  was  sitting 
leaning  back  in  a  low  chair  wrapped  in  her  long 
purple  dressing-gown.  Trix  watched  her  for  some 
rnoments  in  silence.  The  firelight  made  her  features 
more  marked,  almost  harsh. 

"Mother,  you  ought  to  be  in  bed." 

"Ought  I?"  Mrs.  Blake  turned  round  with  a 
sweet  smile. 

Trix  sat  up. 

"  I  think  Stephen  Tempest  wants  me  to  marry  him. " 

"I  am  very  thankful,"  said  Kate  earnestly. 

"But  I  can't." 

"I  hoped  you  were  crying  about  that  when  I  got 
home  to-night,"  said  Kate.  The  room  was  large  and 
square.  Trix's  bed  was  in  the  corner  furthest  from 
the  fireplace.  She  bent  forward  as  if  she  thought 
Kate  had  not  heard  her. 

"I  would  marry  him  to-morrow  if  I  were  not  what 
lam." 

"But  do  you  suppose  for  a  moment  that  caring  for 
you  as  he  does " 

"  It 's  of  no  use.  It  would  be  a  sacrifice,  and  I  won't 
accept  sacrifices.  As  it  is,  he  need  never  know  the 
truth." 


362  Horace    BlaKe 

This  was  the  moment  Kate  had  been  looking  for- 
ward to  with  longing  and  with  dread  ever  since  Trix 
had  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth. 

Trix  had  drawn  up  her  knees  and  her  head  was 
bent  low.  From  where  Kate  sat  she  looked  like  a 
child  in  anguish.  Kate  almost  prayed  to  say  the 
right  thing  now. 

"I  should  feel  if  you  married  Stephen  Tempest 
that  I  had  fulfilled  the  task  I  undertook  when  your 
mother  was  dying. " 

"And  how  about  his  mother  and  his  children?" 
demanded  Trix,  looking  up. 

"Then  after  all  I  shall  have  failed,"  murmured  the 
woman  sitting  by  the  fire. 

"I  read  the  letters  you  gave  me, "  Trix  went  on  in  a 
high  voice,  "that  told  me  about  my  mother;  how  she 
fell  once,  how  she  had  been  in  many  temptations 
before  that  she  had  resisted.  It  is  not  my  mother  that 
I  should  be  afraid  to  see  again  in  my  children,"  in  a 
lower  voice,  "it  is  my  father. " 

Kate  flushed  painfully;  she  felt  as  if  Trix  might 
have  spared  her  this  insult. 

"It  is  of  no  use,"  she  went  on,  "to  tell  me  of  how 
good  a  stock  he  came,  and  that  I  am  far  more  like 
Mary  than  I  am  like  him.  I  am  determined  that  he 
shall  leave  no  human  trace  of  himself  on  the  earth. 
I  would  have  killed  myself  only  I  was  too  cowardly, 
and  now  I  have  something  to  live  for.  I  live  now  for 
the  cause  of  women  against  such  men  as  he. " 

Kate's  anguish  was  too  deep  for  her  sympathy  to  be 
easily  dried  up,  but  there  was  to  her,  with  the  richness 
of  a  strong  woman's  nature,  something  repulsive  in 
the  child's  hardness.  She  did  not  recognise  that  it 
was  the  same  spirit  of  revolt  that  she  had  seen  so  often 


Horace    BlaKe  363 

in  her  father.  Trix  was  more  like  Horace  Blake  when 
she  spoke  out  at  last  in  her  revulsion  against  him 
than  she  had  ever  been  before. 

"I  can't  listen  to  you  while  you  speak  of  your 
father  like  that" — very  slowly.  "If  you  knew  one 
fraction  of  the  longing  I  have  to  be  with  him  again, 
to  have  again  our  fight  in  life  together,  his  companion- 
ship, his  love — I  would  have  it  all  back,  all  I  have 
suffered,  if  I  could  just  be  with  him  again."  The 
voice  was  lower;  the  words  came  slowly  and  dis- 
tinctly. "A  child  like  you  cannot  judge  of  a  great 
man  like  him.  Nature  built  him  on  strange  lines;  he 
had  strange  temptations.  He  was  not  like  other  men; 
but  even  if  he  had  not  cared  for  me  to  the  end,  and  I 
know  he  did  care  for  me  to  the  end,  it  would  have 
been  worth  while  to  live  on  the  memory  of  his  court- 
ship. You  don't  understand,  even  Stephen  Tempest 
could  never  understand.  Do  you  think  there  was 
anything  I  would  not  have  given  up  for  him — yes, 
honour,  truth,  anything?  And  he  for  me?  It  was  for 
me  he  gave  up  his  religion,  his  dream  of  another  world, 
his  love  of  his  mother  and  his  sister;  there  was  no 
barrier  our  love  would  not  have  broken  down.  And 
he  came  to  me  when  he  died ;  it  was  the  last  flicker  of 
his  life.  I  knew  he  was  with  me,  speaking  to  me, 
making  all  plain.  I  made  Dr.  Saumur  look  at  his 
watch,  and  I  knew  afterwards  that  it  was  at  that 
moment  he  died. " 

She  stopped  speaking  and  rose.  As  she  left  the 
room,  she  paused  almost  at  the  foot  of  the  bed. 

Trix's  chin  looked  sharp  just  above  her  knees. 
The  eyes  were  enormous  in  the  obscurity,  the  lips 
were  tightly  closed,  the  hands  were  clasped  round  her 
knees. 


364  Horace   BlaKe 

As  she  turned  away  Kate  suddenly  saw  a  most 
strong  likeness  to  Horace.  She  stood  for  a  moment 
on  the  landing  to  steady  herself;  then  she  listened. 
There  was  no  sound  at  all,  not  one  more  sob  from 
Trix. 

Had  she  failed  at  the  very  moment  of  crisis?  But 
what  could  she  do?  How  could  she  sympathise  with 
the  child  and  be  loyal  to  the  father?  It  was  Horace 
that  stood  between  them,  and  although  she  could 
not  formulate  anything  so  obvious  in  words,  her 
whole  nature  put  Horace  supremely  first. 


VI 

KATE   MADE   A    SPLENDID   MISTAKE 

MRS.  SHENSTONE  was  standing  in  Kate's  sit- 
ting-room, a  sable  cloak  falling  from  her  slop- 
ing shoulders,  holding  a  tortoise-shell  lorgnette  to  her 
eyes,  looking  with  cool  Philistine  criticism  at  Surot's 
picture.  Her  mouth  was  fixed  in  a  straight  line, 
indicating  a  dislike  that  was  not  emotional. 

Kate  gave  a  slight  shudder  as  she  saw  the  attitude 
of  her  visitor.  They  greeted  with  the  familiarity  of 
Christian  names. 

"Come  and  see  my  drawing-room,  Clara,"  said 
Kate  quietly.  The  habit  of  putting  up  with  Clara 
Shenstone  was  one  of  many  years'  standing  and  re- 
quired no  great  effort,  only  it  would  not  have  been 
possible  in  the  presence  of  Surot's  picture. 

"How  is  Trix?"  demanded  Mrs.  Shenstone  as  they 
went  into  the  drawing-room. 

"She  is  in  bed." 

"Is  she  ill?" 

"I  don't  think  so,  but  she  has  just  stayed  in  bed  for 
a  week. " 

"What 's  that  for?"  demanded  Mrs.  Shenstone. 

"I  don't  know.  For  the  first  two  days  I  was  very 
glad,  but " 

"I  don't  imagine  you  want  her  to  become  quite 
bedridden, "  said  Clara  Shenstone. 

"No,  I  suppose  she  will  get  up  some  day."  Kate 
gave  a  wan  smile.  "She  never  explained  a  word  about 

365 


366  Horace    BlaKe 

it ;  she  never  said  that  she  was  going  to  stay  in  bed ; 
she  only  ordered  her  meals  as  if  it  were  an  acknow- 
ledged fact  that  she  must  have  her  food  up-stairs. 
She  has  seen  nobody,  and  I  have  not  asked  what  the 
servants  are  saying  when  people  come  to  see  her.  I 
suppose  they  simply  say  '  Not  at  home. ' 

"When  did  she  take  to  her  bed?" 

"You  remember  the  night  when  she  ought  to  have 
dined  with  you?  I  was  away  or  I  might  have  pre- 
vented her  treating  you  so  badly.  Well,  she  got  up 
the  following  morning,  but  she  has  not  got  up  again 
since.  She  is  quite  peaceful  and  charming  when  I  go 
to  see  her,  only  she  has  now  got  into  her  head  that  I 
ought  to  go  to  bed  too ;  she  is  most  solicitous  for  me. " 

"  Kate,  we  have  both  held  that  child  in  long  clothes, 
and  it  's  no  use  keeping  on  the  outside  of  things. 
When  did  she  find  out?" 

Kate  turned  a  troubled  face  away.  Clara  Shen- 
stone  had  very  little  veneration  in  her  nature,  but  she 
always  kept  some  of  that  small  stock  reserved  for 
Kate  Blake. 

"I  see,"  she  said;  "you  don't  want  to  answer. 
Never  mind.  I  know  that  she  knows.  I  heard  her 
make  a  speech,  and  I  saw  at  once  that  she  had  found 
out — and  then,  the  devotion  to  you  came  on  so 
suddenly." 

Kate  was  still  silent. 

"Never  mind,"  Mrs.  Shenstone  went  on.  "But 
this  suffrage  thing  is  a  mistake." 

"Yes,  it  is,"  said  Kate  sadly. 

"It  is  a  mistake  because  it  makes  her  prominent, 
and  her  bitterness  is  such — "  She  hesitated.  "You 
know  what  I  mean.  It  made  me  wonder,  it  may 
make " 


Horace  BlaKe  367 

"But  then  you  knew,  and  no  one  else  knows." 

"I  have  never  felt  so  very  sure,"  said  Mrs.  Shen- 
stone  slowly.  "I  have  never  felt  it,  the  secret,  to  be 
really  safe.  But  it  's  no  use  speculating.  Trix  should 
marry  Stephen  Tempest." 

"Oh!  how  I  wish  she  would. ' 

"Then,"  Mrs.  Shenstone's  eyes  glittered,  "he  has 
proposed  to  her?  Oh,  well,  I  see  you  don't  want 
to  speak  of  that;  don't — only—  She  stopped  a 
moment.  "What  is  the  use  of  her  staying  in  bed?" 

"I  think  it  's  something  in  her  that  is  very  tired." 

"Well,  good-bye,  Kate,  and  think  over  what  I  have 
said." 

She  pecked  at  Kate's  cheek  and  was  out  of  the 
room  in  a  moment,  shut  the  door  behind  her  and  went 
quickly  up-stairs.  She  tried  the  wrong  door  first,  and 
then  walked  into  Trix's  room  with  half  a  knock. 

"Well,  my  dear,  how  are  you?" 

Trix  stared  and  looked  very  cross. 

"I  am  all  right,"  she  answered  shortly. 

"Oh,  no,  you  are  not!"  said  Mrs.  Shenstone.  "Is 
one  allowed  to  sit  down?" 

"Oh,  please  do." 

The  intruder  carefully  took  off  her  sable  coat  and 
displayed  an  over-elaborate  blue  frock  to  Trix's 
critical  view. 

"I  ought  to  be  very  angry  with  you;  you  were  a 
naughty  child.  But  I  excused  you  because  I  knew 
that  you  threw  me  over  in  order  to  avoid  meeting  a 
certain  young  man. " 

Trix's  cheeks  became  scarlet  and  her  eyes  grew 
large. 

"My  dear  Trix,  do  you  suppose  that  we  were  all 
blind  in  the  Highlands?" 


368  Horace   BlaKe 

"I  did  n't  think " 

"About  us,  I  daresay  not;  but  we  uninteresting  old 
people  did  think  about  you  happy  young  ones.  Why ! 
George  reproached  me  for  letting  you  be  so  much 
together." 

"Why?"  gasped  Trix. 

"Because  Stephen  Tempest  has  no  money  to  speak 
of,  but  I  said  the  money  not  to  speak  of  would  be 
enough." 

Trix  was  torn  between  anger  and  curiosity. 

"Well  then,  Trix,  you  met  in  the  train  and  had  a 
pretty  bad  quarrel,  and  you  gave  yourself  away  com- 
pletely to  me  by  the  look  on  your  face.  Since  that  you 
have  been  running  away  from  him  in  the  most  marked 
manner.  What  was  the  use  of  that  unless  you  wanted 
him  to  propose?  As  you  have  refused  him " 

"I  refused  him!"  cried  Trix  with  a  clumsy  attempt 
at  astonishment. 

"Yes;  was  it  before  you  left  us  to  dine  thirteen 
rather  than  meet  him?  " 

"No"— quickly. 

"It  's  no  use  giving  yourself  airs  to  me,  Trix.  I 
held  you  in  my  arms  when  you  wore  long  clothes,  and 
Kate  made  a  splendid  mistake.  She  is  too  good  for 
this  world,  and  now  this  is  the  sort  of  gratitude  you 
show  her." 

Trix  was  dead  white  now. 

"I  know  it  was  hard  on  you  after  all  those  years, 
but  it  's  no  use  behaving  as  if  it  were  such  an  unheard- 
of  tragedy  and  breaking  her  heart  over  again.  You 
are  extraordinarily  lucky  in  being  legitimate  in  law. 
Kate  tricked  the  law  to  save  you  and  to  save  the 
woman  who  had  wronged  her.  Your  own  mother  was 
my  stepfather's  daughter.  No  one  knows  the  truth 


Horace    BlaKe  369 

but  me  and  one  other  person.  And  now,  after  eighteen 
years  of  Kate's  long  endurance  this  is  how  you  treat 
her.  The  world  need  never  know  if  you  don't  hug 
your  trouble  in  a  selfish  way.  For  Heaven's  sake 
have  some  sense  and  don't  break  her  heart,  and  this 
poor  man's  heart,  and  cut  your  own  throat!" 

Trix  was  leaning  forward  in  the  bed,  clenching  her 
hands,  trying  not  to  break  out  with  the  feelings  that 
seemed  to  herself  to  be  nothing  but  wild  rage. 

"Who — ? "    she  managed  to  say. 

"Who  else  knows,"  answered  Mrs.  Shenstone 
coolly.  "  Stephen  Tempest. " 

Trix  gave  a  shriek. 

"He  knew  it  before  he  proposed  to  you,  my  dear 
little  goose." 

"Go  away,"  cried  Trix,  "oh,  go  away!  Why  did 
you  come  here?  Oh,  do  go  away!" 

"  I  am  going  now.    I  have  no  more  to  say.    I  'm  not 
the  brute  you  think,  though  I  have  been  brutal. 
Good-bye,  Trix!" 
34 


VII 

SHE  WOULD  TELL  ME 

KATE  left  the  house  without  suspecting  that  Mrs. 
George  Shenstone  was  still  in  it,  and  then 
walked  quickly  in  the  direction  of  St.  George's  Hospi- 
tal. For  a  few  minutes  her  mind  continued  to  dwell 
on  Trix.  Clara  Shenstone  had  been  what  she  always 
was — extremely  annoying.  She  had  brought  a  cold 
draught  of  worldliness  to  blow  on  the  difficulties  Kate 
alone  could  deal  with  in  regard  to  Trix.  Kate's  nerves 
did  not  tingle  irritably,  they  had  been  too  long  under 
the  control  of  a  severe  treatment  to  do  that — but 
without  any  excitement  she  was  greatly  displeased. 
She  wanted  Trix  to  marry  Stephen,  but  she  very 
much  disliked  the  idea  that  the  thing  ought  to  be  done 
here  and  now  for  worldly  motives.  Clara,  she  thought, 
had  not  even  faced  the  worst  trouble — the  fact  that 
Stephen  must  be  told  the  truth  before  the  marriage 
was  possible,  and  the  other  fact  that  Trix  would 
rather  never  see  him  again  than  let  him  know  it.  She 
was  inclined  to  think  that  Clara  made  too  much  of  the 
effect  of  Trix's  speeches.  Surely,  though  the  only  one 
she  had  heard  had  been  terrible  to  her,  the  child's 
heart-broken  bitterness  would  not  excite  such  com- 
ments as  Mrs.  Shenstone  imagined.  Clara  knew  the 
truth  and  understood;  but  would  other  people  make 
anything  of  it  ?  Of  course,  if  the  story  of  Nancy  Potter 
were  dug  up  and  the  truth  were  guessed  at,  then  people 
would  comment  on  Trix's  attitude,  but  not  otherwise. 

370 


Horace    BlaKe  371 

She  reached  the  Tube  station,  and  was  on  her  way 
to  Leicester  Square  when  her  mind  reverted  to  the 
business  she  had  in  hand.  A  young  journalist  a  little 
way  from  her  was  meanwhile  watching  Mrs.  Blake. 
He  had  once  had  a  few  words  with  her  when  he  had 
been  to  interview  Horace  Blake  the  week  before  the 
great  man  left  England  for  the  last  time.  It  was  an 
interview  that  he  afterwards  knew  had  been  one  of  the 
dramatist's  opportunities  for  laughing  at  the  world 
and  at  himself.  Coming  out  from  Horace's  room 
excited  by  his  charm  and  strange  flow  of  talk,  he  had 
seen  Mrs.  Blake  in  a  plain  blouse  and  unfashionable 
skirt,  and  she  had  made  him  think  of  one  of  the  great 
figures  on  the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine  Chapel.  Now  she 
wore  a  black  coat  that  hung  in  simple  heavy  folds, 
and  on  her  grey  hair  a  bonnet,  of  which  the  long  veil 
was  thrown  back  on  her  shoulders. 

"She  has  suffered  much  since  then,"  he  thought, 
but  she  had  also  suffered  much  before  then,  and 
perhaps  he  imagined  some  of  the  changes  he  thought 
he  observed  in  her  face.  Impertinence  is  a  journalistic 
virtue,  and  this  young  man  had  his  full  share  of  the 
soft  brass  that  sticks  at  nothing.  At  Dover  Street  a 
woman  sitting  next  Kate  got  out  and  the  young 
journalist  took  her  place. 

"You  don't  remember  me,  Mrs.  Blake.  I  saw  you 
in  an  hotel  in  Dover  Street. " 

"Yes,  I  do,"  said  Kate,  coming  to  from  her  own 
thoughts  with  an  immense  effort,  and  looking  at  the 
untidy  young  man  with  kindly  reminiscence  of  his 
enthusiasm.  "Yes,  I  do;  I  gave  you  a  photograph." 

"It  is  my  greatest  treasure,"  he  said,  although 
Blake's  photograph,  be  it  said  in  his  defence,  was  not 
really  as  dear  to  him  as  those  of  his  father,  his  mother, 


372  Horace    DlaKe 

and  his  first  and  second  loves.  Kate  felt  warmed  by 
the  look  in  the  eager  eyes. 

"But  when  is  the  last  play  coming  out? "  he  plunged 
bravely. 

"I  am  on  my  way  to  see  the  publishers  about  it 
now. " 

They  had  to  talk  loud  in  order  to  be  heard  above 
the  rattling  noises  about  them.  Then  there  was  the 
lull  at  Leicester  Square  Station,  and  Kate  could  add 
in  a  lower  voice : 

"You  want  to  be  able  to  announce  it;  you  may  say 
that  it  can  be  expected  before  long. " 

He  nodded  eagerly.  "I  should  like  to,"  he  said, 
"but  I  am  no  longer  a  journalist.  I  am  working  for 
Brown,  Puck  and  Co. ;  how  I  wish  you  would  publish 
with  them!" 

There  was  no  time  to  say  more. 

Kate  changed  her  Tube  and  soon  found  herself 
standing  underneath  St.  Paul's.  She  experienced  a 
sudden  acute  sense  of  refreshment.  An  old  man  sat 
on  a  bench  and  some  children  played  near  with  such 
a  sense  of  leisure  as  made  a  strange  commentary  on 
the  awful  hurry  of  the  city.  They  helped  the  impres- 
sion of  the  great  passive  dome  in  their  independence 
of  time.  She  stood  a  moment  in  the  sunshine,  which 
was  unusually  warm  for  the  time  of  year,  and  then 
refreshed,  she  moved  on  briskly  to  Paternoster  Row. 

Mrs.  Horace  Blake  was  known  in  the  ofHce,  and 
was  not  kept  waiting  for  more  than  the  inevitable 
moments  during  which  the  head  partner  of  the  firm 
could  be  told  of  her  coming. 

They  met  as  old  acquaintances,  and  then  he  plunged 
into  business. 

"  I  have  read  it  myself, "  he  said,  which  Kate  felt  to 


Horace    BlaKe  373 

be  an  astonishing  announcement.  The  grey-haired 
man  of  business,  who  had  been  publishing  books  for 
forty  years,  like  other  publishers,  read  very  few  books 
himself. 

"The  fact  is,"  he  went  on,  "that  our  reader  was 
rather  frightened  by  it." 

Kate's  lip  curled  a  little  with  unspoken  scorn. 

He  turned  his  revolving  chair  so  as  to  be  quite 
opposite  to  her.  "You  see,  Mrs.  Blake,  all  the  other 
plays  and  books  are  going  very  well;  the  melancholy 
event  of  the  spring  has  quickened  the  sale  immensely, 
and  what  we  fear  is  that  the  publication  of  this  play 
would  injure  the  sale  of  the  rest  of  the  plays,  the  early 
novels,  and  the  biography." 

"But  why?" 

Kate  spoke  impatiently. 

"The  public  at  present,"  he  joined  the  tips  of  his 
ten  fingers  as  if  their  contact  were  a  help  to  him,  "the 
public  at  present,"  he  repeated,  "have  taken  a  view 
of  him  which  this  last  play  would  make  impossible. 
Popular  speakers  and  writers  quote  such  passages  as 
express  what  they  choose  to  believe  that  Mr.  Blake 
thought  and  believed.  This  play,"  tapping  the  pile 
of  typewritten  pages  lying  before  him,  "would  raise 
such  opposition,  such  indignation  that  Blake's  works 
and  Blake's  Life  would  be  tabooed  by  the  religious  and 
the  old-fashioned  world.  And  that,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  sale,  is  a  very  serious  consideration." 

"Then  you  don't  want  to  publish  it?"  said  Kate, 
and  she  moved  a  little  as  if  she  were  going  to  get  up. 

"What  I  would  advise,"  said  the  publisher  slowly, 
"is  to  wait  until  the  present  excellent  run  of  the  other 
things  falls  right  off.  Then  I  think  the  excitement, 
even  if  there  were  something  of  a  scandal,  would  do  no 


374  Horace  BlaKe 

great  harm.  And,  of  course,  there  would  be  the  kind 
of  sale  for  the  play  itself  that  always  follows  a  contro- 
versy. " 

"I  see,"  said  Kate,  "that  you  don't  want  it.  I 
cannot  take  your  view.  I  do  not  mean  to  put  off  the 
publication  of  a  masterpiece,  and  I  don't  want  to 
delay  it  precisely  because  it  is  the  most  outspoken  of 
all  his  work.  Of  course,  a  dramatist  represents  the 
feelings  of  very  different  people;  he  loses  himself  in 
making  them  come  alive,  and  the  public  interpret 
thoughts  to  be  his  own  which  he  has  only  supplied  to 
suit  the  characters.  The  wonder  to  me  of  this  last 
play  is  that  it  is  himself  speaking  and  yet  it  is  dra- 
matic. " 

"You  are  determined  to  publish  this  before  the 
biography  appears?"  Shrewd  eyes  had  seen  that  it 
was  so  before  the  measured  voice  had  spoken. 

"Certainly." 

He  knew  Kate  Blake  well  enough  not  to  argue  with 
her. 

"Well, "  he  said,  "if  you  will  make  this  mistake,  we 
have  warned  you  and  we  can  do  no  more." 

Kate  rose. 

"Wait  one  moment  please,  Mrs.  Blake.  If  you  are 
determined  to  publish  this  we  would  rather  do  it  for 
you  than  that  it  should  be  published  by  anybody 
else.  The  mischief  would  be  done  just  as  much. " 

"But  you  are  afraid  of  it?" 

"Afraid  of  the  effect  on  the  present  sales,  certainly. " 

" I  am  sorry, "  said  Kate,  "but  considering  the  view 
you  take  of  it,  I  would  rather  give  it  to  somebody  who 
would  understand  it  better." 

Kate  left  the  office  with  the  MS.  in  her  hand.  She 
was  very  angry  now. 


Horace    BlaKe  375 

"What  a  tradesman!  What  a  low  tradesman!" 
she  exclaimed  to  herself.  "What  does  he  care  for 
genius  or  morals  or  anything  else  but  his  wretched 
trade?" 

She  had  been  prepared  to  find  that  the  man  might 
be  shocked,  possibly  even  scrupulous  as  to  what  he 
ought  to  do  about  it,  but  impressed,  excited,  dazzled, 
by  the  genius  of  the  thing.  Not  a  word  of  apprecia- 
tion, of  admiration  from  the  first  person  besides  her- 
self who  had  read  it.  She  became  more  and  more 
angry  and  contemptuous.  She  got  home  very  late  for 
luncheon,  ate  hardly  anything,  and,  after  resting  for 
a  few  minutes  in  the  drawing-room,  was  going  up- 
stairs to  see  Trix  when  that  young  woman  walked 
into  the  room  in  a  coat  and  skirt  and  hat  as  if  she 
meant  to  go  out.  She  held  her  head  very  high,  and 
her  cheeks  were  bright,  but  that  tears  were  recent  was 
unmistakable.  She  sat  down  some  way  from  the  fire 
and  from  the  chair  from  which  Kate  had  just  risen. 

"They  let  Mrs.  Shenstone  come  up  to  my  room," 
she  said  indignantly. 

"Clara  Shenstone  went  to  your  room!"  cried  Kate 
in  astonishment. 

"She  hardly  knocked,"  said  Trix.  "She  forced 
herself  in.  I  hate  her. "  The  tears  were  coming  out 
now.  Trix  put  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes.  "What 
business  was  it  of  hers  to  come  and  tell  me  things?  I 
hate  her." 

Kate  was  standing  over  her  now. 

"I  hate  her  because — "  Tears  choked  her  for  a 
moment. 

"Because  of  what,  Trix?" 

"Because  she  would  tell  me,  and  it  was  no  business 
of  hers;  she  would  tell  me — "  Suddenly  Trix  looked 


Horace    BlaKe 


straight  up  at  Kate.  "She  told  me  the  truth,  that  I 
am  horrid,  horrid  to  you,  making  everything  worse 
for  you.  " 

"My  dear  child!" 

"I  Ve  been  a  selfish  pig,  "  Trix  went  on,  "making  it 
all  harder  for  you.  I  've  been  doing  the  heroine  and 
making  a  fuss  of  myself  and  behaving  horribly  to  you 
and  to  —  to  Stephen." 

Kate  still  stood  over  her,  waiting  with  intense 
anxiety  for  each  word.  Low  and  mumbled  into  the 
damp  handkerchief  came  the  next  ones. 

"Stephen  knew  —  he  knew  —  about  my  mother  — 
before  he  —  "  Then  she  could  get  no  farther.  An 
enormous  relief  changed  the  whole  expression  of 
Kate's  face. 

A  moment  later  Trix  looked  up  shyly. 

"Mother,  you  do  like  him?"  she  said  earnestly. 
"  I  should  not  be  happy  unless  I  knew  that.  " 

It  was  not  true,  and  Kate  knew  it  was  not  true  ;  but 
Trix  thought  it  was  true,  and  Kate  knew  that  and 
therefore  liked  it. 


N: 


VIII 

THERE    IS    ONLY    ONE    REAL    FACT 

EXT  morning  Kate  received  a  letter  from  Stephen 
Tempest.  He  wrote  from  Paris,  and  he  told 
her  that  he  was  going  to  stay  abroad  for  a  couple  of 
months,  during  which  time  he  would  get  on  with  the 
Life.  He  had  arranged  enough  material  to  be  able  to 
write  several  chapters — he  hoped  so,  at  least — with- 
out having  to  return  home  to  consult  the  papers  he 
had  left  behind  him.  The  letter  was  rather  a  shock  to 
Kate.  This  sudden  departure  was  not  what  she  or 
Mrs.  Shenstone  had  intended!  Kate  gave  Trix  the 
note  to  read  and  wondered  if  she  were  at  all  troubled 
by  it.  Certainly  she  concealed  the  trouble  well,  if 
there  were  any  to  conceal. 

Trix  continued  to  be  very  quiet,  but  Kate  felt  that 
the  bustle  and  restlessness  which  had  so  suddenly 
stopped  might  revive  again  at  any  moment.  She 
asked  no  questions,  and  could  only  suppose  that  Trix 
must  have  given  her  work  for  "the  cause"  into  other 
hands.  When  she  could  not  be  of  any  use  to  Kate, 
Trix  went  for  little  walks  and  drives  by  herself,  and 
smiled  at  her  if  they  met  on  the  stairs.  During  meals 
and  at  all  times  when  they  were  together,  Trix  was 
inclined  to  be  silent.  It  was  a  curious  stillness,  a 
little  mysterious  to  the  older  woman  who  looked  on. 

It  is  true  that  love  usually  makes  for  anxiety,  for 
doubts;  but  there  are  natures,  Kate  said  to  herself, 
who  take  it,  once  they  have  believed  in  its  existence, 

377 


Horace   BlaKe 


as  if  it  were  naturally  lasting.  Trix  had  come  into  a 
new  world,  and  she  did  not  appear  to  be  curious  or 
uneasy  or  anxious.  Did  it  never  occur  to  her  to  be 
anxious  as  Kate  was  anxious?  Did  it  never  even 
occur  to  her  that  Stephen,  having  had  his  dismissal, 
might  take  it  as  final? 

It  was  Kate  who  had  the  morbid  thought  that 
Stephen  had  acted  out  of  chivalrous  pity,  and  even 
now  might  be  thankful  that  he  had  not  been  taken  at 
his  word.  Kate  had  no  great  opinion  of  the  fidelity 
of  men,  and  she  was  frightened  at  Trix's  childlike 
confidence.  "It  is  almost  as  if  she  had  made  up  her 
mind  to  two  months'  sleep  with  full  security  as  to  who 
should  wake  her,"  said  Kate  to  herself. 

Meanwhile  Kate  was  fully  occupied.  Two  days 
after  the  interview  with  the  publisher  of  most  of 
Blake's  works,  his  widow  received  a  startlingly  large 
offer  from  another  firm  —  Brown,  Puck  &  Co.  —  who 
were  anxious  to  secure  the  play  and  did  not  ask  to  read 
it  first.  She  would  not  let  them  sign  the  agreement 
until  they  had  read  it.  Apparently  nothing  but 
admiration  was  expressed  by  whoever  read  it  for  the 
firm,  and  before  long  Kate  received  the  first  batch  of 
proofs. 

Then,  while  Trix  took  the  dogs  out  for  exercise, 
and  arranged  the  flowers,  and  did  some  embroidery 
on  a  frame,  and  read  a  little,  Kate  in  the  downstairs 
study  was  correcting  printers'  errors  in  reproducing 
Horace  Blake's  last  work,  while  he  looked  on  as 
Surot  had  made  him  look  on. 

How  could  she  do  it?  Long  years  of  training  under 
Horace  had  taken  off  the  fine  edge  of  her  susceptibili- 
ties. He  had  no  doubt  hardened  her,  and  intellectually 
she  needed  broad,  almost  coarse  effects  to  excite  her 


Horace    BlaKe  379 

admiration.  From  a  child  she  had  had  a  cult  for 
success.  The  ambition  that  was  missing  in  her 
father's  composition  was  curiously  strong  in  her.  The 
rdle  of  the  iconoclast  glorified  by  her  contemporaries 
had  a  huge  fascination  for  her.  She  was  back  in  the 
old  atmosphere  charged  with  electricity,  with  excite- 
ment, with  defiance,  with  the  security  of  fame.  She 
had  no  right  to  find  excuses  for  anything  and  every- 
thing he  had  written ;  she  had  no  right  to  delight  in  the 
evil  and  daring  of  his  genius  while  he  spumed  out  the 
horror  of  that  last  play. 

At  last  it  was  nearly  finished,  and  Kate  noticed  that 
the  proofs  had  taken  her  about  five  weeks.  Anything 
that  recalled  the  passing  of  the  wintry  days  made  her 
think  of  Stephen.  She  wished  he  had  written  again. 
And  while  she  was  wishing  to  know  more  of  him,  he 
was  standing  on  her  doorstep,  and  as  she  tied  up  a 
bundle  of  proofs  he  was  shown  into  the  room. 

"  I  have  done  all  I  could  by  myself, "  he  explained  a 
moment  later.  "I  can  go  no  farther  without  seeing 
you  again,  so  I  came  home.  I  crossed  last  night.  I 
am  in  all  sorts  of  difficulties,  as  to  details,  dates,  the 
circumstances  of  the  publication  of  the  first  plays. 
I  'm  afraid  I  shall  give  you  a  great  deal  of  trouble. " 

"I  don't  mind  that. " 

They  were  both  silent.  Kate  looked  quietly  at  the 
dark  face  and  the  clear  eyes.  She  had  liked  him 
from  their  first  meeting.  He  looked  thin  and  tired. 

"It  will  take  hours  and  hours, "  he  said. 

"All  right,"  said  Kate  with  her  motherly  smile. 

"And  where  am  I  to  see  you? "  He  looked  straight 
at  her. 

"Here,"  she  answered. 

"You  want  to  know  if  I  am  alone,"  she  went  on 


380  Horace   BlaKe 

after  a  moment's  pause.  "I  am  not;  Trix  is  at 
home." 

They  both  turned  their  eyes  towards  the  fire. 

"Mr.  Tempest,"  she  said  very  gently,  "do  you 
know  now  that  there  were  things  I  kept  out  of  the 
book?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  know  about  Nancy  Potter. 
How — how  is  she?" 

"Did  you  know  it  some  time  ago?" 

"I  knew  before  I  was  last  in  this  house." 

"And  it  was  because  you  knew ?" 

"No,  no,"  said  Stephen,  "it  was  because  I  shall 
never  care  for  anyone  but  Trix. " 

Kate's  face  was  very  bright  in  the  firelight. 

"I  came  home  that  night,  and  I  found  Trix  shed- 
ding such  a  quantity  of  tears." 

They  were  both  silent.    Kate  got  up. 

"I  think  she  is  resting  in  the  drawing-room.  It 
must  be  just  as  you  like. " 

Stephen  looked  as  if  what  he  would  like  would  be  to 
return  to  the  pavement  of  Eccleston  Square  as  soon 
as  possible. 

"I  shan't  startle  Trix — surprise  her?"  said  Stephen 
anxiously. 

"Oh,  no!"  Kate  smiled  at  him. 

He  went  upstairs  and  found  Trix  lying  on  a  couch 
in  the  firelight,  with  open,  dreaming  eyes. 

He  stood  in  the  shadow  in  the  middle  of  the  room 
until  she  saw  that  he  was  there,  and  then  she  put  her 
hands  over  her  eyes. 

"Is  it  any  use  to  talk  now?" — his  voice  sounded 
harsh. 

Trix  got  up  slowly  and  then  held  out  her  hand  to 
him.  He  took  it  and  tried  to  speak,  but  he  could  not. 


Horace  BlaKe  381 

There  was  something  in  her  gesture  of  welcome  that 
was  very  grave  and  gentle. 

Then  they  sat  down  opposite  to  each  other.  He 
was  surprised  to  feel  at  once  that  she  was  absolutely 
at  her  ease;  absolutely  at  home  with  him  and  with 
herself.  The  embarrassment  of  their  last  interview 
had  gone  altogether  for  Trix.  He  did  not  know  that 
he  was  to  her  the  one  human  being  with  whom  she 
felt  absolutely  herself.  The  silence  of  the  first  mo- 
ments gave  him  time  to  realise  her,  and  the  intensely 
nervous  condition  which  he  could  not  analyse  relaxed 
in  her  presence.  Still  he  did  not  know  what  he  was 
going  to  say.  He  was  annoyed  at  his  own  words  when 
they  did  come: 

"Trix,  why  did  you  send  me  away?" 

"Oh,  I  was  so  miserable;  you  can't  think  how 
miserable  I  was.  You  must  let  me  talk  and  talk  and 
talk  before  you  say  anything  at  all  to  me." 

"If  you  mean  to  send  me  away  again,"  he 
muttered. 

"Stephen,  if  you  don't  let  me  say  all  I  want  to 
say.  ..."  She  got  up  and  went  to  stand  by  him. 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  sad  little  smile. 

"Sit  down,  Trix,  and  I  '11  listen,"  he  said. 

"And  now  I  don't  know  where  to  begin, " — she  had 
sat  down  close  to  him,  and  the  eyes  that  had  cap- 
tured the  sunlight  when  they  had  first  opened  on  the 
world  and  had  kept  it  in  their  depths  ever  since 
shone  ruddy  in  the  firelight.  Stephen  lost  his  extreme 
malaise  in  a  more  definite  anxiety. 

"Wasn't  it  dreadful  in  the  train?"  she  said  ab- 
ruptly. "But  I  was  so  miserable  at  quarrelling  with 
you  that  it  made  me  understand — "  She  hesitated. 

"Oh!  Trix,  was  it  as  soon  as  that?     Why  I  only 


382  Horace   BlaKe 

really  knew  it  then  myself."     They  looked  at  each 
other  as  if  these  were  tidings  of  infinite  importance. 

Stephen  leaned  his  elbow  on  the  mantelpiece. 
"Blessed  be  that  express  train.  But,  Trix " 

"Oh!  let  me  talk  first,  Stephen.  What  was  it  made 
you  change  about  .  .  .  about  my  father?" 

"I  had  just  read  the  papers. " 

"Was n't  it  too  awful?  To  think  .  .  .  I  can't  bear 
it.  I  can't,  I  can't."  She  buried  her  face  in  her 
hands.  "I  have  never  said  anything  about  him  to 
anybody.  I  never  could.  But  you  had  a  shock  too. " 
She  looked  up  with  tears  on  her  cheeks.  "Think  of 
him  in  the  church,  think  of  him  with  you  and  me  by 
the  sea  in  the  sunset.  When  I  think  of  his  smile  that 
last  night  after  I  had  been  reading  to  him  and  he 
talked  of  his  childhood  to  me  and  I  thought  he  was — 
Ah!  how  I  am  haunted  by  it.  I  dreamt  for  weeks 
that  someone  smiled  at  me  and  I  smiled  back,  and 
then  the  smile  changed  into  a  devil's  grin.  And — ' 
She  hurried  on — "It  was  all  so  absurd,  my  devotion 
to  him,  and  my  thinking  myself  so  much  wiser  about 
him  than  mother.  Only  it  was  all  too  bad  to  be 
absurd.  If  it  had  not  been  for  mother,  I  think  I 
should  have  killed  myself. " 

"Did  n't  I  come  in  at  all?"  asked  Stephen. 

"  I  did  n't  know  you  cared.  I  think  you  only  made 
things  worse,  because — — " 

Stephen  looked  down  at  her  bent  head  in  silence. 
She  gave  a  sob. 

"Trix — let  us  just  both  of  us  together  put  it  right 
behind  us.  It  can  only  hurt  if  you  let  it  hurt.  I  believe 
that  most  people  have  a  bad  time  to  get  through 
before  they  are  allowed  to  be  happy,  now  that  has 
been  our  bad  time,  and  it 's  over. " 


Horace   BlaKe  383 

"But  the  facts  are  not  over,"  said  Trix  in 
a  low,  indistinct  murmur  which  he  could  hardly 
catch. 

"There  is  only  one  real  fact,  and  that  is  our  love, " 
he  said  firmly. 

"But  I  am  his  daughter."  The  rest  he  hoped  that 
she  could  not  say. 

"And  I  am  not  mother's  daughter." 

It  was  done  now. 

"Trix,  if  you  love  me  enough  you  will  do  what  I 
say — forget  the  past,  leave  it.  It  is  a  difficult  thing 
to  do  at  first,  but  both  our  lives  depend  on  your 
being  brave  enough  to  do  it.  Only  a  brave  woman 
could  do  it. " 

"If  I  loved  you  enough,"  said  Trix  quietly,  "I 
should  refuse  to  marry  you.  I  should  love  you 
always,  only  ..." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Stephen.  "Trix,  I  won't  have 
that  sort  of  love,  do  you  hear?  I  can  refuse  it  if  I 
choose.  I  suppose  you  can't  force  it  on  me  if  I  won't 
take  it.  I  'm  only  going  to  have  the  real  thing. 
I  've  let  you  talk,  and  now,  please,  it 's  my  turn, 
only  I  want  you  just  to  go  through  that  old  formula. 
I  like  the  old  ritual.  Just  say  'yes'  in  the  right  place. 
Will  you  marry  me,  Trix?" 

"I  don't  know." 

Stephen  still  felt  anxious.  It  seemed  so  tremen- 
dously obvious  that  it  should  be  all  right,  but  Trix 
had  always  had  an  element  of  the  mysterious,  and  the 
aloofness  of  another  soul  frightened  him. 

"It 's  come  to  this,"  he  said,  "you  must  take  me 
or  leave  me,  Trix.  Don't  deceive  yourself  with  any 
nonsense  about  doing  me  a  cruel  wrong  for  my  own 
sake." 


384  Horace    BlaKe 

She  leaned  forward  and  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands. 

"Trix,  will  you  look  at  me  and  answer  my 
question?" 

She  looked  at  him,  at  the  little  smile  which  ex- 
pressed the  strong  will  to  keep  them  both  from  the 
terrible  abyss  of  mistakes  which  he  felt  was  close 
before  them. 

"I  've  not  told  you  half  I  meant  to  say."  She 
sighed  and  put  her  hand  to  her  forehead.  "I  can't 
help  it, "  she  said  at  last. 

"I  can't  help  it,"  she  reiterated,  and  getting  up 
began  to  walk  up  and  down  the  room.  He  had  a 
moment's  fear  of  the  door,  but  she  did  not  get  near  it. 

"I  can't  help  it,  I  must.  Oh,"  she  said,  speaking 
across  the  room  to  Stephen  with  the  full  confidence 
she  had  always  felt  towards  the  one  friend  with  whom 
she  had  ever  been  wholly  at  ease,  "I  must  be  happy; 
I  can't  help  it. " 

The  change  in  his  face  startled  Trix. 

"Stephen,  you  look  so  strange." 

"What  do  you  suppose  these  minutes  have  been  to 
me?" 

"I  '11  never,  never  make  you  unhappy  again." 

"I  should  have  liked  to  have  actually  heard  the 
answer  I  asked  for. " 

"How  silly  you  are!  Well,  'yes,'  then — is  that 
enough?" 

"It  's  enough  for  all  practical  purposes." 

The  words  jested,  but  his  face  did  not  jest  as  they 
stood  holding  each  other's  hands,  and  then  he  took 
her  in  his  arms. 

"Come  and  tell  me  all  the  rest, "  he  murmured. 

"I  'm  too  happy  to  talk  now,"  said  Trix. 


Horace   BlaKe  385 

Downstairs  Kate  sat  very  still.     She  was  so  glad, 
and  so  solitary  that  a  mighty  sense  of  the  greatness  of 
human  life  and  of  the  infinite  reach  of  the  soul  came 
over  her. 
as 


IX 

AUX    GRANDS   CCEURS   TOUT   EST   PETIT 

THE  installation  of  the  ex-cure,  henceforth  to  be 
known  as  M.  1'Abbe  Fabre,  in  a  small  house 
near  the  village,  had  been  carried  out  not  long  after 
his  resignation.  He  seemed  interested  in  its  arrange- 
ments, and  he  made  jokes  about  his  tiny  flower- 
garden  and  his  tiny  potager,  and  how  he  intended  to 
show  what  could  be  done  by  a  small  boy  acting  under 
a  master-mind.  But  the  new  cure  knew  him  too  well 
not  to  detect  that  the  old  man  was  nervous  as  to  the 
move,  and,  once  in  the  little  house  to  which  many  of 
his  old  parishioners  had  brought  the  most  varied 
offerings  possible,  the  symptoms  of  nervousness  only 
increased.  The  cure  watched  to  see  if  le  tout  petit  had 
noticed  what  alarmed  him. 

"What  can  he  be  afraid  of?"  he  asked  himself. 
But  he  did  not  like  to  question  his  colleague  about 
what  seemed  to  be  some  private,  intimate  trouble. 
The  two  busy  priests  gave  all  the  time  they  could 
spare  to  sit  with  him,  or,  on  his  better  days  to  help 
him  down  to  the  beach.  He  missed  the  outlook  on 
the  sea  from  the  presbytery,  and  the  sound  of  the 
waves  in  his  room  at  night.  Once  or  twice  the  curt 
was  almost  sure  that  his  old  friend  did  not  want  him 
to  stay  when  he  had  intended  to  be  with  him  for 
some  hours,  and  he  never  asked  either  of  the  priests 
to  have  dejeuner,  or,  indeed,  any  refreshment  with 
him.  The  tall,  stalwart  figure  was  still  upright,  and 

386 


Horace    BlaKe  387 

the  big  face  had  all  its  usual  gentleness,  though  its 
ruddy  colour  was  turning  to  grey.  Still  he  was  not 
quite  himself  with  his  brother  priests.  One  day  he 
asked  the  curi  to  lead  him  to  the  cemetery,  and  very 
slowly,  stopping  by  many  graves  just  to  say  a  word 
of  the  lives  they  both  knew  well,  or  of  those  known 
only  to  the  older  man,  they  came  out  on  the  farther 
side,  where  a  little  apart  on  rising  ground  there  was  a 
mound  that  had  no  cross  and  no  flowers.  Standing 
by  it  the  two  priests  said  the  De  Profundis. 

Then  the  old  man  took  a  deep  breath  of  the  cold  air 
that  came  across  the  water.  His  mind  was  full  of 
memories  of  the  dead  whose  bodies  had  been  laid  in 
the  graves  behind  him. 

"I  never  loved  any  soul  so  quickly  or  more  deeply 
than  that  one, "  he  said,  looking  away  from  the  sea  to 
the  long  mound  at  their  feet. 

"He  had  a  great  reputation,"  said  the  cure,  for 
whom  fame  had  always  had  its  allurements.  "He 
had  done  great  things.  Tiens !  we  did  not  know  what 
a  great  man  we  had  here."  The  fascination  of  the 
dramatist's  personality  and  his  achievement  were 
great  to  the  man  with  the  poet's  nature,  whose  am- 
bitions had  finally  fixed  themselves  on  another  world. 

"The  greatest  thing  in  his  life  was  his  death. "  He 
spoke  gently,  almost  to  himself. 

"And  Mademoiselle?"  queried  the  curl. 

The  old  man  sighed. 

"She  has  not  written  for  months.  Poor  child! 
Under  certain  circumstances  I  am  to  give  her  some 
papers  left  by  her  father,  but  as  I  cannot  keep  in 
touch  with  her  I  cannot  know  if  the  circumstances 
have  arisen." 

"The  mother  was  hard, "  said  the  curt. 


388  Horace   Blake 

"No,  no,  no, "  answered  the  other  with  an  intensity 
that  surprised  his  companion.  "For  her  I  have  the 
utmost  respect." 

He  was  silent,  absorbed  in  the  story  of  the  Blakes, 
wondering  about  the  child  whom  he  had  refused  to 
receive  into  the  Church. 

"How  to  distinguish  imagination  from  faith!"  he 
murmured  to  himself. 

Then  they  went  back  through  the  graves,  and  from 
the  tombstones  seemed  to  rise  the  drama  of  the 
suffering  and  the  failures  and  the  triumphs  of  human 
souls. 

Then  as  they  passed  through  the  village  street, 
greeted  on  all  sides  as  they  went,  the  old  man  leaning 
on  the  cure's  arm,  began  to  hurry  and  he  looked  ner- 
vously at  the  clock  in  the  watchmaker's  window.  It 
was  nearly  four.  He  stopped. 

"  I  won't  take  you  any  farther, "  he  said  in  the  new, 
nervous  manner,  and  the  colour  on  his  big,  loose 
cheeks  deepened.  "Good-night.  Thank  you,  thank 
you." 

The  cure  protested  that  he  would  rather  see  him  to 
his  house,  but  the  old  man  became  almost  petulant 
and  they  parted.  The  cure  was  hurt  and  puzzled,  but 
he  had  no  time  to  spare  and  he  strode  swiftly  away 
and  was  soon  going  at  a  great  pace  along  the  top  of 
the  cliff.  He  had  a  bad  case  to  deal  with,  over  which 
his  mind  was  troubled.  He  felt  strongly  in  the  matter, 
and  feared  his  responsibility. 

Meanwhile  the  old  priest  had  got  home  and  opened 
his  unlocked  front  door. 

"Late  as  usual,"  said  a  cross  voice  loudly  in  the 
kitchen,  and  the  old  man  shivered  a  little  as  he  moved 
into  the  small  square  sitting-room. 


Horace    BlaKe  389 

"  No  keeping  of  hours  in  this  house, "  the  voice  went 
on,  and  somebody  murmured  in  agreement. 

He  rose  and  shut  the  door  of  the  room,  but  he 
could  not  help  hearing  something  about  "up  in  the 
night — no  repose. " 

The  milk-tea  the  doctor  had  ordered  for  his  daily 
" quatre  heures"  was  not  brought  for  another  ten 
minutes.  Then  the  broad-faced  Breton  with  thin, 
iron-grey  hair,  surrounded  by  the  frill  of  a  white  cap, 
flounced  into  the  room  and  put  a  tray  with  a  little 
bang  on  the  table  beside  him. 

"It  is  already  twenty  minutes  past  four,"  she  said, 
"and  M.  le  Medecin  said  four  o'clock." 

M.  1'Abbe*  did  not  answer.  He  was  feeling  weak  and 
sick,  but  he  lost  nothing  of  his  usual  dignity  of  appear- 
ance, which  had  begun  to  be  a  source  of  grievance  to 
his  servant.  He  was  as  grand  as  ever  he  was  when  he 
was  M.  le  Cure — not  a  word  of  friendly  gossip  to  be 
got  out  of  him. 

The  tea  was  weak;  the  boiled  milk  was  burnt.  M. 
1'Abbe*  made  himself  drink  it,  and  then  sat  still  in  the 
dark. 

"I  did  disturb  her  in  the  night, "  he  said  to  himself, 
"but  the  state  of  things  is  wrong  for  her  as  well  as  for 
me." 

But  yet,  what  was  to  be  done?  She  had  been  an 
admirable  servant  for  many  years  in  the  presbytery, 
and  no  doubt  it  was  hard  in  her  old  age  to  move  into  a 
tiny  house  and  have  the  care  of  an  invalid  while  she 
was  not  too  strong  herself.  He  alone  had  known  of 
the  change  in  her  temper  for  the  worse  during  the  last 
few  years,  and  he  had  foreseen  that  it  would  be  out  of 
the  question  for  her  to  remain  at  the  presbytery  after 
he  had  left  it.  And  what  could  be  done?  Unlike 


390  Horace    BlaKe 

many  Frenchwomen  she  had  not  saved  money,  and 
there  were  no  funds  with  which  to  pension  her.  He 
had  expected  to  find  her  a  little  difficult,  but  he  had 
had  no  anticipation  of  the  life  she  would  lead  him 
when  he  was  in  her  power  and  without  anyone  else  in 
the  house.  Her  idea  of  the  present  situation  was  to 
take  as  much  rest  as  possible  after  a  hard  life,  and 
to  nurse  her  grievance  at  being  obliged  to  leave  the 
presbytery.  Any  latent  cruelty  was  certain  to  develop 
in  such  a  state  of  mind.  Presently  he  lighted  the  lamp ; 
he  did  so  many  little  things  now  rather  than  ring  the 
bell,  which  might  or  might  not  be  answered;  and  set 
himself  to  read  his  Office,  and  the  great  words  he 
loved  soothed  and  raised  him. 

"  'Aux  petits  cceurs  tout  est  grand,  Aux  grands 
cceurs  tout  est  petit,'"  he  murmured  to  himself  as 
he  shut  the  old  worn  breviary. 


AS   TO   THE    CAHIER   I    KNOW   NOTHING 

KATE  spent  two  days  after  Trix's  wedding  in  wind- 
ing up  the  tiresome  business  it  had  involved, 
that  seemed  useless  and  dreary  now  that  the  event 
was  over.  Kate  missed  Trix,  but  the  fundamental 
fact  that  it  was  not  her  own  child  who  had  left  her 
unconsciously  made  the  great  difference.  She  was  not 
given  to  self -analysis,  or  to  looking  too  closely  into 
painful  thoughts.  Only  it  was  easier  now  to  turn  to 
her  own  interests.  As  Trix  had  put  her  arms  round 
her  for  the  last  "good-bye"  Kate  had  not  known 
anything  but  a  deep  sense  of  her  loss.  She  watched 
her  with  her  grave,  happy  face  smiling  tenderly  at  her. 
It  was  the  awful  venture  of  marriage  that  moved 
Kate's  thoughts  at  that  moment.  For  the  time  there 
was  little  that  a  mother  could  feel  that  she  had  not 
felt  in  doubts  and  fears,  in  spite  of  her  affection  for 
Stephen. 

But  still,  after  some  days  had  passed,  Kate  was 
half-consciously  ready  to  enjoy  her  freedom.  There 
was  nothing  that  need  be  untrue  in  her  actions  or  her 
looks  now.  She  put  away  the  wedding-veil  she  had 
lent  Trix  in  its  cedar  box  and  she  seemed  to  hear  Mrs. 
George  Shenstone  in  her  high-pitched  voice  saying 
three  or  four  times  at  least  at  the  wedding-feast:  " I 
love  the  old  lace  veil;  it  was  her  mother's  and  her 
grandmother's  wedding-veil,  you  know.  I  love  the 
link  it  makes  with  her  past,  don't  you?" 


392  Horace  BlaKe 

Now  Kate  need  not  even  see  the  Shenstones.  She 
could  do,  and  she  meant  to  do,  exactly  what  she  liked. 
Two  earlier  plays  of  Blake's  were  to  be  revived  and 
she  knew  that  she  would  be  consulted  during  the 
rehearsals.  Then  in  two  weeks'  time  the  last  play 
would  be  out.  Kate  went  to  her  sitting-room  four 
days  after  the  wedding  and  determined  to  enjoy  her 
evening.  She  took  from  the  shelf  an  old  volume  of 
her  father's  essays  which  she  had  not  read  for  years. 
She  turned  to  a  favourite  essay  on  the  "Postulates  of 
Ethics,"  and  she  began  reading  with  the  feeling  of 
freedom  that  only  comes  after  a  time  of  much  busi- 
ness fretted  with  wearisome  details.  But  the  sense 
of  detachment  was  delusive,  she  thought  she  was 
paying  attention  until  she  realised  that  she  had 
turned  over  two  pages  by  mistake  without  detecting 
the  hiatus.  She  put  the  book  down  open  on  her  knee, 
a  little  startled  and  disturbed.  She  was  not  free  yet; 
she  had  imagined  she  was  going  to  enjoy  a  renewal  of 
old  thoughts,  old  mental  energies,  but  she  could  not. 

She  found  she  had  really  been  thinking  of  Trix  while 
she  tried  to  think  of  ethics.  What  perfect  tact  of  the 
heart  Trix  had  shown  during  her  short  engagement. 
The  simplicity  with  which  she  had  accepted  Stephen's 
devotion  and  Kate's  love  had  gone  far  to  diminish  the 
unacknowledged  difficulties  of  the  position.  If  Trix 
had  had  more  self-love  she  must  have  been  sensitive 
and  difficult.  A  more  spoiled  nature  might  have  been 
unconsciously  tyrannous  to  the  two  who  were  so  bent 
on  her  happiness.  She  had  ceased  to  be  morbid  about 
the  secret  as  to  her  own  birth,  and  Kate  realised  that 
that  had  really  involved  some  generous  self-control. 
It  was  surely  because  that  effort  had  been  made  for 
the  sake  of  others  that  she  had  gained  a  gentle, 


Horace   BlaKe  393 

unconscious  dignity  in  her  attitude  all  through.  They 
had  really  been  very  happy — happy  in  all  the  details 
of  the  trousseau  and  the  wedding,  and  Kate  had  been 
surprised  at  how  much  pleasure  she  had  taken  in 
making  the  material  side  of  it  all  very  charming.  She 
smiled  as  she  sat  alone  with  a  real  feminine  satisfaction 
at  the  successes  she  had  achieved. 

Then  she  gave  a  sharp  sigh.  There  is  always  a 
little  reaction  after  such  a  time  as  she  had  just  passed 
through.  She  had  to  face  her  own  life  alone.  She 
wanted  to  be  free,  to  live  a  large  life  of  her  own,  with 
wide  interests  and  intellectual  energies.  But  could 
she? 

If  her  mind  were  free  now  of  any  care  for  Trix,  it 
was  not  therefore  really  free.  It  had  more  room  than 
ever  for  Horace  to  occupy.  The  book  had  fallen  on 
the  ground.  She  went  over  and  over  the  long  years  of 
her  married  life,  until  time  after  time  she  came  back 
to  the  last  month  of  his  illness.  Very  gradually  she 
began  to  wish  that  she  had  not  shrunk  from  the  one 
witness  of  those  last  weeks  who  had  wanted  to  tell 
her  many  details  that  no  one  else  could  tell  her.  Trix 
had  been  silenced  when  she  wanted  to  speak,  and 
probably  now  she  would  never  again  see  clearly  the 
things  that  she  had  known  then.  The  shock  of  the 
discovery  must  have  warped  her  view  even  where  it 
had  not  almost  wiped  the  facts  out  of  her  memory. 

Kate  was  beginning  to  wish  to  know  even  what 
would  be  repulsive,  because  from  among  the  repulsive 
things  that  she  suspected — the  false  piety,  the  self- 
deception,  the  childishness — might  it  not  be  possible 
to  glean  some  notes  of  natural  human  tenderness, 
some  characteristic  touches  that  would  not  be  pure 
pain?  At  moments  she  felt  that  she  must  read  Trix's 


394  Horace    BlaKe 

sketch  of  those  last  days,  just  because  ignorance  of 
any  kind  about  him  was  becoming  more  unbearable 
than  painful  knowledge.  To-day  she  got  up  twice 
with  the  intention  of  going  to  fetch  the  MS.  Trix  had 
given  her  at  the  cottage  from  her  room  upstairs,  and 
twice  she  sat  down,  unable  to  do  it.  She  felt  weak 
and  very  lonely.  We  dream  of  freedom  from  ties  as  if 
that  freedom  would  make  us  more  ourselves,  but  it 
rarely  does — it  only  showed  Kate  the  greatness  of  her 
needs  to-day.  Presently  the  evening  post  was  brought 
to  her. 

There  was  a  card  from  Trix,  a  bill,  and  a  small, 
thick  packet  from  St.  Jean  des  Pluies;  she  saw  the 
postmark  at  once.  She  read  the  happy  little  card 
from  Varenna  and  then  tore  open  the  parcel.  There 
was  a  short  letter  from  the  ex-cure,  a  small  paper 
note-book,  and  an  envelope  with  the  words  "For 
Trix"  written  on  it  in  Horace's  writing. 

The  cure,  in  stiff,  courteous  language,  wrote  to  the 
effect  that  this  enclosure  for  Mademoiselle  and  the 
little  cahier  had  been  left  for  him  by  Monsieur.  It 
seemed  that  Horace  had  told  the  old  man  a  few  days 
before  his  death  that  he  wished  him  to  take  charge  of 
a  letter  for  his  daughter,  to  be  given  to  her  if  she 
became  aware  of  the  secret  of  her  birth,  but  it  was  not 
brought  to  him  by  Roberts  until  the  day  after  Blake's 
death. 

"  Madame, "  he  concluded,  "  I  am  myself  so  unlikely 
to  live  that  I  wish  to  give  these  to  you  now.  I  am 
convinced  that  Mr.  Blake  would  have  wished  you  to 
have  them.  He  had  decided  to  ask  you  to  read  and 
to  keep  the  letter  to  his  daughter,  but  afterwards  he 
thought  that  it  would  be  better  for  her  to  receive  it 


Horace    BlaKe  395 

from  one  who  was  not  a  member  of  the  family.  As  to 
the  cahier  I  know  nothing,  it  was  never  mentioned 
to  me." 

Kate  took  the  little  parcel  up  to  her  room.  It  was 
a  warm,  brilliant  night,  the  birds  still  chirped  at 
intervals  in  the  Square.  She  sat,  dressed  in  a  loose 
violet  wrapper,  on  the  big,  chintz-covered  sofa  on 
which  her  father  used  to  rest,  and  she  stayed  reading 
for  hours  puzzling  over  scraps  of  pencil  or  blotted 
entries  in  the  little  cahier,  for  it  was  to  the  cahier  that 
she  turned  at  once.  It  was  made  of  thin,  poor  paper, 
all  tiny  squares  of  purple  lines,  on  which  he  had 
written  scraps  and  quotations,  and  made  memoranda 
after  his  constant  habit.  There  was  no  sequence,  no 
order  at  all.  There  seldom  had  been  in  the  note- 
books of  which  he  had  made  so  much  use  for  his 
plays. 

Here,  Kate  felt,  might  be  knowledge  at  last.  She 
had  no  strong  wish  to  read  the  letter  to  Trix,  which 
she  put  carefully  away,  but  the  note-book — just  like 
dozens  of  his  old  note-books — was  a  link  with  their 
past,  just  one  book  more  in  which  he  had  written  after 
his  manner,  for  it  was  his  nature  to  write  rather  than 
to  speak.  There  was  an  extraordinary  sense  of 
familiarity,  of  intimate  intercourse  with  him  in  the 
act  of  reading. 

The  first  entry  he  had  scrawled  in  pencil : 

"Pascal  may  call  'la  recherche  de  la  gloire'  the 
greatest  baseness  in  man,  but  what  a  gorgeous  defence 
of  it  follows." 

"But  what  would  Pascal  have  said  to  my  clinging 
to  my  last  wish  for  success?  Even  the  cure  was  long- 


396  Horace   BlaKe 

ing  to  find  a  way  out,  he  wanted  to  read  the  play !  He 
hoped  it  was  not  impossible  for  a  Christian !  Even  he 
would  love  me  to  have  another  success.  It  is  nature 
plus  forte  gue  tout.  But  I  think  I  regret  it  most  for 
Kate's  sake.  I  have  always  given  her  pain,  but  I  have 
given  her  success.  With  her  it  has  been  a  vicarious 
passion  and  purer  and  stronger  in  consequence.  The 
whole  of  that  Pensee  is  even  truer  of  Kate  than  of  me. " 

"I  do  mind  less  and  less  about  that  play.  I  ought 
not  to  mind  at  all.  I  sincerely  hate  it,  it  is  the  lowest 
down  thing  in  the  writing  way  that  I  have  ever  done. 
I  don't  believe  I  could  read  it  through  again.  Kate 
has  made  no  protest.  I  think  she  must  in  her  heart 
have  condemned  it  too. " 

"I  can't  get  away  from  Pascal,  but  to  me  the 
mystery  is  that  I,  a  vicious  man,  should  be  able  to 
understand  so  completely  what  he  felt  on  that  great 
night  of  his  conversion,  Monday,  23rd  November, 
1654.  What  would  Kate  say  to  that  amazing  docu- 
ment? Why  do  I  see  its  meaning  when  she  would 
not?  Is  it  because  the  worst  needs  most  help ?  Then 
to  the  good  who  look  on  how  strange  this  must  seem. 
I  need  all  infinity  to  cleanse  me.  The  good  are  for- 
given because  they  forgive  the  bad.  What  a  big, 
glorious  thing  will  be  the  forgiveness  of  the  woman 
who  has  forgiven  me. " 

"  'II  faut  savoir  douter  ou  il  faut,  assurer  ou  faut, 
en  se  soumettant  ou  il  faut. ' 

"  'La  pie*te*  est  differente  de  la  superstition.  Sou- 
tenir  la  pie*te"  jusqu'a  la  superstition  c'est  la  detruire. ' 
But  how  to  distinguish,  among  these  Bretons  for 


Horace    BlaKe  397 

instance,  between  the  two?  One  thing  is  clear  that 
things  that  would  be  superstitious  in  me  are  not 
superstitious  in  them.  It  is  superstition  to  believe 
what  you  have  no  just  grounds  for  believing.  My 
father-in-law  carried  this  precept  out  farther  than 
anyone  I  ever  met.  But  he  believed  in  me  for  a 
long  time,  and  he  certainly  had  no  just  ground  for 
that." 

"  '  Scio  cui  credidi, '  said  Pascal.  I  have  known  Him 
in  Whom  I  have  believed.  I  could  not  have  acted 
against  Him  as  I  have  if  I  had  not  known  Him.  My 
father-in-law  was  a  good  man,  but  if  he  had  not  been 
good,  if  he  had  wished  to  sin,  he  could  never  have 
sinned  as  I  have  sinned.  My  violence  showed,  as 
William  James  says  of  another  case,  that  'a  Christian 
education  still  rankled  in  his  breast. ' 

"David  said,  'Against  Thee  only  have  I  sinned,' 
and  yet  he  had  put  the  husband  of  the  woman  he 
wanted  in  the  forefront  of  the  battle — the  meanest, 
crudest  trick  any  despot  could  commit.  Can  one 
think  that  it  means  that  God  had  the  real  responsibil- 
ity of  saving  the  man  and  the  woman  David  had 
injured?  Anyone  /  have  injured  God  may  have 
saved  abundantly.  He  can  reward  them  and  punish 
me.  He  is  punishing  and  will  punish  me.  His  justice 
appeals  to  my  own  small  sense  of  justice.  Just 
punishment  is  truth  in  action.  Punishment  is  truth 
insisted  upon." 

"The  cure  says  that  the  Miserere  has  more  joy  in 
it  than  the  Te  Deum.  It  has  mysterious  passages  that 
I  never  understood  before.  David,  who  had  behaved 
like  a  cur,  says:  'The  hidden  things  of  Thy  wisdom 


398  Horace    BlaKe 

hast  Thou  made  manifest  to  me. '    He  boasts  of  fresh 
secrets  with  God." 

"So  it  was  with  David,  but  David,  with  this  awful 
lapse  was  a  holy  man.  Did  David,  did  Pascal,  realise 
what  may  happen  to  a  man  habitually  vile?" 

After  that  came  some  memoranda  on  practical 
points,  but  two  pages  farther  on  he  came  back  to 
himself: 

"I  have  been  reading  Huysmans's  En  Route,  and 
I  have  cried  for  Durtal  as  I  could  not  cry  for  myself. 
He  seems  only  to  have  known  low,  bad  women;  and 
I  have  had  Kate  for  my  wife.  He  is  spared  much 
agony.  Is  it  egotism  to  think  out  the  difference 
between  Durtal  and  myself?  He  loved  pleasure  and 
found  it  with  women  until  the  creeping  devils  of  the 
underworld  got  at  him.  One  is  never  sure  if  it  is  a 
woman  or  a  devil  who  haunts  him.  Women  worse 
than  himself  were,  it  seems,  the  evil  influence  on  him. 
I  was  the  evil  influence  on  women  better  than  myself. ' ' 

"Durtal  was  first  drawn  away  from  evil  by  the 
beauty  of  the  liturgy,  of  mysticism,  of  the  spiritual 
life  in  ascetic  men  and  women.  Durtal  was  desen- 
chantt,  bored  beyond  words,  sick  of  his  life.  Every 
step  towards  his  purification  was  suffering,  but  the 
beautiful  soothes  him  till  he  gets  beyond  the  sense  of 
the  beautiful  into  a  naked  submission  of  the  will. 
He  was  not  dying  or  like  to  die  when  his  purification 
began.  I  was  marked  for  death.  I  was  suffering 
agonies.  I  revolted  as  I  had  revolted  all  my  man- 
hood against  God.  I  was  not  sure  if  my  mind  believed 
in  God,  but  I  knew  that  my  will  hated  Him.  When 


Horace  BlaKe  399 

I  was  marked  by  death  I  went  on  fighting  until  I  was 
defeated.  I  lay  like  a  whipped  hound  at  the  feet  of  my 
Master.  If  I  had  had  any  other  resource,  any  other 
hope,  I  would  not  have  turned  to  Him.  That  was  why 
the  hound  had  to  be  whipped  within  an  inch  of  his  life, 
and  he  knows  it. " 

"I  keep  thinking  of  Durtal.  How  many  people 
have  refused  to  believe  in  the  cleansing.  Too  rotten, 
too  far  gone.  They  won't  believe  it  of  me,  does  that 
matter?  Durtal  (I  call  his  creator  by  his  name) 
endured  long,  fearful  suffering  before  he  died.  He 
suffered  agony  in  his  eyes,  but  he  refused  to  take 
anything  to  stop  the  pain  because  he  had  sinned  with 
his  eyes.  I  am  getting  much  worse.  I  know  it.  I 
have  little  time  and  much  to  do  in  it. " 

"Rotten,  unreal,  posturing — that  is  what  I  said  of 
Durtal  when  I  read  the  book  years  ago.  I  can  hear 
my  friends  saying  all  that  of  me.  I  do  mind  that  very 
much,  but  I  won't  do  anything  to  prevent  it.  If  only 
Kate  will  not  think  as  they  will.  And  yet  what 
chance  that,  clear-eyed,  facing  facts,  knowing  me, 
never  shirking  the  truth,  she  can,  on  the  data  she  has 
to  go  upon,  think  anything  else  of  me  ?  Her  love  will 
read  it  mercifully,  will  excuse  me  on  the  score  of 
health  and  weakness,  the  power  of  the  priests,  my 
inherited  superstitions.  But  dearest,  would  I  could 
reach  just  so  far  as  to  make  you  take  all  the  facts, 
the  fact  of  God's  action  on  me;  the  action  of  the 
Eternal  Powers  remaking  the  vilest  thing  into  a  thing 
of  hope  and  even  of  love !  I  am  crying  in  the  dark  to 
Kate.  Don't  excuse  me,  dearest,  don't  palliate  any- 
thing, don't  call  black  white,  only  seek  to  know  the 


4OO  Horace    BlaKe 

truth  about  me.    Rotten,  but  not  unreal  now,  broken, 
not  posturing.    Despairing  of  life  but  having  hope. " 

"Kate  forgave  me.  God  forgave  me.  Will  she  see 
no  likeness,  no  affinity  between  her  act  and  God's 
act?  Was  her  forgiveness  the  only  real  fact,  the 
second  forgiveness  a  subjective  fancy?  A  self-decep- 
tion, a  last  insincerity?  What  I  long  for  is  that  she 
may  recognise  a  great  ethical  fact,  she  would  never 
willingly  blind  herself  to  fact.  Forgiveness  is  a  fact 
she  has  known  from  experience.  Will  she  deny  to 
the  Eternal  Powers  the  noblest  action  of  her  own 
life?" 

"Kate  knows  what  it  is  to  forgive.  I  know  what  it 
is  to  be  forgiven. " 

"So  much  to  do  and  so  little  coming  of  it.  Failed 
to  find  two  to  whom  I  thought  I  could  give  money, 
have  sent  the  hundred  to  B.  D.  I  wonder  what  Kate 
gave  her  years  ago?  I  must  tell  Kate  how  the  thou- 
sand I  have  drawn  out  has  been  spent.  I  should  like 
to  have  built  a  church  at  home,  but  I  must  give  up 
what  is  not  necessary  for  what  is — restitution,  repara- 
tion. The  cure  here  will  accept  five  pounds  for  the 
poor,  nothing  else.  I  think  Kate  will  be  almost  rich 
and  Trix  I  leave  to  her." 

"I  feel  stronger  to-day.  I  can  think  more  clearly 
of  what  has  passed,  and  study  it  from  a  psychological 
standpoint. 

"  Point  i.    I  half  consciously  wanted  to  come  to  a 

Catholic  country — that  was  the  strong  undercurrent. 

"Point  2.    I  told  myself  flippantly  when  I  got  here 


Horace    BlaKe  401 

that  I  could  take  a  reminiscent,  merely  aesthetic 
pleasure  in  the  hymns,  the  processions,  the  churches, 
that  was  a  move  in  self-defence. 

"Point  3.  That  proving  impossible,  I  began  to  feel 
a  violent  revulsion  against  the  influence  that  would  go 
deeper  than  the  surface.  William  James  speaks  of 
'letting  loose  the  subconscious  allies  behind  the 
scenes. '  I  would  not  let  them  loose. 

"Point  4.  The  fight  produced  the  upheaval  of  the 
worst  in  me,  the  revolt  against  the  elements  in  me 
that  were  subconsciously  working  for  rearrangement, 
redemption.  The  upheaval  found  expression  in  the 
play.  The  peculiarity  of  my  sin,  the  individual  secret 
of  it  was  that  I  knew  I  was  using  my  perception  of 
higher  things,  the  esoteric  knowledge  implanted  in  a 
Christian  childhood,  for  dramatic  effect.  That  alone 
would  have  been  my  special  reason  for  insisting  on  the 
destruction  of  the  play. 

"Point  5.  The  exhaustion  that  followed  the  writing 
of  the  play  was  in  proportion  to  the  effort  made,  it 
left  the  mental  and  ambitious  faculties  practically 
dead.  In  that  empty,  blank  exhaustion  there  was 
space  for  gentler  memories  whispering  half-heard  in 
the  agony.  It  was  the  agony  of  knowing  that  I 
should  work  no  more,  and  only  live  to  die. 

"Point  6.  The  fight  had  been  so  bitter,  though  I 
did  not  know  it,  because  higher  and  holier  things  were 
very  near.  But  they  did  not  come  to  fill  the  emptiness 
then.  I  knelt  down  at  the  procession — I  don't  know 
why.  The  cure  does  not  attach  much  importance  to 
what  made  me  do  that,  nor  does  he  think  there  was 
anything  supernatural  in  what  followed.  'The  im- 
agination is  not  the  soul '  is  one  of  his  favourite  quota- 
tions. Yet  it  was  a  symptom,  no  doubt,  of  that  faint 
26 


4-O2  Horace    BlaKe 

effort  towards  readjustment  against  which  all  the  rest 
of  me  was  in  revolt. " 

"After  I  had  seen  the  cure  and  shown  him  my  soul 
sick  unto  death,  with  flippant  comments  and  personal 
impertinence,  things  seemed  to  settle  down.  But  I 
did  in  some  faint  way  respond  to  higher  impulses. 
Was  I  'letting  loose  subconscious  allies'  at  last?  I 
tried  to  be  kind  to  Roberts,  I  was  less  self-indulgent. 
I  made  one  or  two  efforts  at  self-control.  I  burned  the 
rotten  stuff  which  had  amused  me,  but  I  felt  cynical 
as  I  watched  the  slow  burning.  I  puzzled  Roberts  by 
saying  that  our  vices  leave  us,  not  we  our  vices.  Then 
came  more  illness  and  far  more  acute  despair." 

"  It  is  nothing  very  unusual,  as  seen  in  such  records 
of  conversion  as  I  have  been  able  to  find,  that  imme- 
diately before  help  came  I  suffered  mentally  as  I  never 
suffered  before  for  some  nights  and  days.  It  seems, 
as  far  as  it  can  be  understood  psychologically  at  all, 
that  the  struggle  for  readjustment  was  at  the  most 
acute  stage,  while  to  me  there  seemed  no  light,  no 
fight,  no  possibility  of  change. " 

"It  seemed  a  state  of  absolute  cold  reasoning,  the 
mind  working  with  resistless  logic,  driving  home,  rub- 
bing in  ruthlessly  the  facts  of  disease,  suffering,  death, 
and  at  the  same  time  throwing  a  horrible  light  on  the 
moral  side ;  making  its  repulsiveness  appear  quite  clear 
and  undisguised — no  hope,  no  self-respect,  no  fruition 
to  come,  nothing  but  agony.  And  while  the  mind 
refused  faith  of  any  kind  there  was  what  seemed  the 
nag  of  superstition  that  grew  stronger  as  time  went  on, 
a  fear  of  future  punishment  that  had  none  of  the  hope 
or  courage  or  submission  of  faith. " 


Horace    BlaKe  403 

"As  I  understand  the  view  of  the  modern  psycholo- 
gist (it  appeals  to  me  as  a  fairly  true  analysis),  mean- 
while the  floods  of  other  influence  were  rising  in  the 
subconscious  regions  of  the  soul.  The  state  of  the 
mind  became  unbearable,  it  hanged  itself  in  its  own 
rope,  so  to  speak,  of  a  logic  that  ignored  the  great 
powers  of  the  universe,  ignored  anything  beyond  it- 
self. The  breaking-point  was  reached,  the  barriers 
were  broken  down,  the  readjustment  took  place — 
the  human  being  that  was  torn  and  divided  reached 
to  a  unity  that  amazed  itself.  " 

"  It  was  at  one  with  itself  because  it  was  at  one  with 
the  universe,  at  one  with  the  Eternal  Powers.  It 
seemed  that  Light  forced  itself  into  the  darkness,  a 
great  wind  blew  into  the  stifled  consciousness  and  the 
whole  nature  turned  from  a  nightmare  to  an  awaken- 
ing of  an  incomparable  clearness.  At  the  same  time 
the  sense  of  individual  nothingness  and  unworthiness 
— no,  I  can't  go  on,  I  never  shall  be  able  to  go  on. 
There  is  no  coal  of  fire  to  cleanse  my  lips.  That  fire 
is  for  the  prophets,  not  for  me.  All  my  life  I  have  put 
everything  into  words,  now  I  have  no  words  for  what 
has  been  done  to  me.  I  could  not  tell  even  Kate  any 
more,  near  as  we  are  together.  This  impossibility  of 
saying  more  is  terrible.  I  can  leave  myself  to  God, 
but  it  is  very  hard  to  leave  her  to  Him.  My  Master 
answers,  '  What  is  it  to  thee  if  I  leave  her  to  wait  until 
I  come?'" 

"To  see  things  the  same  eye  to  eye — it  cannot  be  in 
this  world.  If  Kate  came  here  what  a  thousand 
causes  of  irritation !  The  old  cure  and  his  bows — Trix 
taking  flowers  to  the  church — Kate  avoiding  the 


404  Horace    BlaKe 

church  herself,  or  going  into  it,  and  if  going  in,  seeing 
me  kneel  before  a  poor  statue  of  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes, 
one  of  'the  idols'  manufactured  by  the  thousand  in 
Paris — with  false  flowers  in  vases;  stupid-looking, 
cow-faced  women,  Trix  kneeling  by  me  while  I  said 
my  rosary.  The  confessional !  I  have  taught  Kate  to 
hate  it  all.  No,  I  must  not  ask  her  to  come  here.  We 
should  fret  openly  or  in  silence.  I  must  go  back  to 
England.  I  have  been  cowardly,  dreading  her  com- 
ing, fearing  a  failure  in  what  matters  far  the  most, 
that  we  should  understand  each  other.  I  must  go 
home  and  then  I  can  go  quietly  to  church,  worry  her 
as  little  as  possible — try  only  to  show  her  my  love. 
Or  I  could  stay  in  London  if  she  likes.  I  have  not 
much  hope  of  her  understanding,  but  I  can  hope  to 
draw  so  near  together  in  will  that  the  darkness  will 
be  bearable. " 

"I  have  spoken  to  Roberts  about  the  return  to 
England.  I  see  he  is  afraid  of  the  journey — thinks 
it  may  be  very  painful — but  would  be  glad  to  get 
back." 

"Everything  is  changed  to  me  by  this  new  plan  of 
the  French  doctor.  Kate  is  sure  to  come  here  with 
him.  I  know  I  could  not  stand  Paris.  But  coming 
here  with  this  doctor — she  will  be  full  of  the  cure. 
And  I  can't  be  cured — I  can  only  be  tortured.  Life, 
if  I  once  think  of  life — oh,  how  terrible  is  this  confu- 
sion! And  they  are  wrong,  it  is  making  me  far  more 
ill.  Yet  the  least  I  can  do  is  to  do  what  Kate  wishes. " 

"Dr.  Saumur  thinks  it  worth  while  to  come — is 
coming,  but  no  word  of  Kate  coming.  What  does  it 
mean?" 


Horace    BlaKe  405 

The  writing  was  uncertain,  blotted  now. 

"I  never  thought  she  would  shrink  from  coming. 
Has  it  been  too  much,  this  time  away  from  me?  Was 
it  too  much,  my  leaving  her?  Is  she  angry  with  me? 
Does  she  not  want  to  come?  Why  did  I  make  so 
sure?  Everything  in  heaven  and  earth  is  in  darkness. " 

"Dr.  Saumur  wants  me  to  have  some  preparation 
before  the  examination;  it  is  all  delayed,  dragged  out, 
and  no  word  from  Kate — I  can't  understand.  Oh,  I 
want  Kate — I  must  have  Kate — my  mind  is  failing 
me — is  my  will  failing  too?" 

The  last  entry  was  so  faint  she  could  never  be  quite 
clear  as  to  its  meaning.  It  seemed  to  be  this : 

"Kate  was  ill — why  did  they  not  tell  me?  She  is 
better — she  is  coming — My  God,  will  she  under- 
stand?" 


XI 

THE   ETERNAL   HORACE 

IT  was  two  months  after  the  wedding  and  Stephen 
had  come  up  to  London  for  the  day.  It  was 
glorious  weather  and  suited  well  with  his  mood.  He 
had  left  Trix  with  his  mother  in  his  old  home,  and  he 
thought  that  they  were  getting  on  admirably  together. 
They  had  gone  straight  to  his  home  on  getting  back 
to  England.  Kate  had  been  away  on  a  visit  in  the 
north,  and  there  had  been  nothing  to  take  him  up  to 
London  until  he  received  a  curt  note  from  Edward 
Hales,  asking  to  see  him  on  a  matter  of  business. 

There  is  an  indefinable  aroma  of  prosperity  and 
self-satisfaction  about  the  newly-married.  Edward 
Hales  decided  that  Stephen  had  it  in  no  blatant 
fashion,  and  yet  it  was  there.  When  two  people  have 
spent  their  days  in  telling  each  other  how  especially 
delightful  they  are,  and  this  in  a  manner  and  time 
approved  and  consecrated  by  all  human  tradition, 
there  must  be  some  result  traceable  in  voice  and 
visage. 

"  Sorry  to  have  brought  you  up  for  this,"  said  Hales, 
after  a  hearty  greeting,  "but  I  could  not  put  what  I 
wanted  to  say  in  a  letter. " 

Stephen  was,  in  fact,  a  good  deal  bored  at  having  to 
come  to  London  just  then. 

"I  'm  rather  absorbed  in  the  biography." 

"Ah!"  said  Hales  with  interest. 
406 


Horace    BlaKe  407 

They  were  sitting  now  much  as  they  had  sat  in  the 
little  back  study  when  Stephen  had  confided  in  Hales 
that  he  was  to  write  Blake's  Life. 

"Ah!"  repeated  Hales,  turning  at  once  from  any 
other  point.  " How  goes  it? " 

"Oddly  enough,  I  think  it  goes  well." 

"All  things  go  well  with  you,"  murmured  Hales 
kindly. 

"Yes,  perhaps  it  is  a  general  optimism,  but  the 
strange  thing  is  that  a  few  weeks  before  I  married  I 
thought  I  must  give  it  up — it  seemed  impossible.  I 
loathed  him  so,  but  now  ..." 

"You  have  really  come  round  to  him  under  a  new 
influence,"  said  Hales. 

Stephen  flushed.  What  would  be  Hales's  astonish- 
ment if  he  knew  that  Stephen  had  never  once  alluded 
to  her  father's  Life  in  his  wife's  presence? 

"No,"  he  said,  "but  I  find  that  hatred  is  nearly  as 
good  a  motive  power  as  love  or  admiration. " 

Hales  dared  not  ask  how  this  attitude  was  possible 
in  Trix's  husband.  He  had  scented  a  mystery  before ; 
he  went  carefully  now,  and  was  silent. 

"Which  is  best  from  a  literary  point  of  view,  for  a 
biographer  to  love  a  man  and  be  candid  as  to  his 
faults,  or  to  hate  him  and  be  candid  as  to  his  gifts  and 
virtues?"  Stephen  put  the  question. 

"  I  will  tell  you  when  I  have  read  your  book.  Of 
course,  it  is  about  Horace  Blake — the  eternal  Horace 
Blake — that  I  want  to  see  you.  I  know,  among  other 
interesting  cads,  a  young  man  called  Green,  who 
works,  as  a  clerk  I  think,  for  Brown  &  Puck.  Green 
has  always  been  a  crude  adorer  of  Blake's.  I  forget 
how  he  came  across  Mrs.  Blake,  but  it  seems  that  it 
was  at  his  suggestion  that  the  firm  approached  her, 


408  Horace    DlaKe 

and  I  suppose  you  know  that  they  were  to  have 
published  his  last  play  a  month  ago?" 

"Yes,  I  have  been  meaning  to  ask  why  it  is  not 
out." 

"Well,"  said  Hales  slowly,  "Green  confides  in  me 
that  the  play  is  not  delayed,  but  stopped  altogether; 
the  type  is  to  be  destroyed,  every  pull  printed  to  be 
produced  and  burnt  with  the  typewritten  copy.  It 
seems  the  MS.  had  been  already  destroyed.  Conceive 
such  barbarity!  A  whole  Blake  play  to  disappear,  and 
she  has  no  more  right  to  do  it  than  the  widow  of 
Wren  would  have  had  to  blow  up  St.  Paul's.  I  've 
been  counting  the  days,  almost  the  hours,  since  I  saw 
the  play  advertised.  And  now  .  .  ."he  stamped  his 
foot  on  his  worn  Turkey  carpet,  "I  shall  never  read 
The  Burning  Bush,  never  know  what  Blake's  last,  and 
perhaps  greatest,  work  contained!" 

Stephen  knew  that  Blake  had  been  a  constant  pre- 
occupation with  Hales — that  he  had  admired  and 
hated  him  in  almost  equal  degrees.  But  he  was 
hardly  prepared  for  the  depths  of  his  disappointment. 
That  was  a  surface  impression,  while  his  thought 
flashed  back  to  Kate's  first  mention  of  the  play,  how 
she  had  told  him  as  a  great  piece  of  good  news  that 
she  had  received  the  third  act,  and  that  she  was 
inclined  to  think  it  was  her  husband's  greatest  work. 

"I  'm  trying  to  remember  exactly  what  happened 
at  the  time,"  said  Stephen.  "Blake  told  me  himself 
that  he  had  asked  his  wife  to  destroy  the  play.  I  had 
just  been  seeing  her  and  I  felt  sure  she  had  not  obeyed 
him.  Well,  I  rashly  let  him  see  that  I  believed  that 
it  was  not  destroyed,  and  I  'm  sure — as  sure  as  I  am 
that  I  'm  speaking  to  you  now — that  he  was  very 
glad."  Stephen  stood  up  and  looked  into  the  little 


Horace   BlaKe  409 

blank  square  yard  behind  the  house.  "My  idea  is 
that  he  had  promised  the  cure  to  have  it  destroyed, 
and  had  told  her  to  destroy  it,  but  that  all  along  he 
hoped  she  would  not  do  it.  He  satisfied  the  priest 
and  his  own  substitute  for  a  conscience  by  giving  an 
order  which  he  did  not  believe  would  be  obeyed. 
When  I  got  back  to  England  I  asked  her  point-blank 
whether  it  was  burnt.  She  confided  in  me  that  it  was 
not  destroyed,  and  I  told  her  the  impression  I  had  had 
that  he  would  be  very  glad. " 

"Have  you  read  it?" 

"No,  I  haven't.  She  evidently  did  not  want  me 
to  read  it,  so  I  have  waited  like  the  rest  of  the 
world." 

"Green  has  seen  parts,  and  says  it  is  magnificent, 
gorgeous,  'very  hot.'  As  far  as  I  can  get  at  any 
reflection  of  it  through  his  muddled,  vulgar,  but 
genuine  enthusiasm,  it  must  be  an  astonishing  per- 
formance. I  asked  you  to  come  simply  to  see  if  you 
could  save  it." 

"I  can't  interfere  with  her,"  said  Stephen  sadly. 
"But  I  wonder,  did  she  give  the  publishers  any  ex- 
planation? I  can't  conceive  what  can  have  made  her 
change.  She  had  corrected  the  proofs,  she  knew  it  by 
heart,  she  was  looking  forward  to  its  publication  as 
the  greatest  thing  that  could  happen  to  her. " 

He  sat  down  and  seemed  absorbed  in  thought. 

"  I  have  not  seen  her  since  I  married.  She  has  been 
away  on  a  visit  in  the  north. " 

"Mrs.  Blake  wrote  to  Brown  &  Puck  that  she  had 
found  some  papers  which  showed  her  that  he  had 
wished  the  play  to  be  destroyed.  Could  it  be  some- 
thing he  had  signed  at  the  cure's  orders?" 

Stephen  did  not  answer. 


4io  Horace    BlaKe 

"So  much  depends  on  what  the  play  really  is,"  he 
said  at  length. 

"Nothing  depends  on  that,"  said  Hales  angrily; 
his  rough  red  hair  seemed  to  rise  in  protest.  "  He  was 
not  imbecile,  the  thing  is  a  genuine  work  of  a  great 
genius;  no  one  has  the  right  to  deprive  you  or  me  or 
anyone  else  of  what  belongs  to  the  human  race. " 

"She  might  be  speaking  herself!"  said  Stephen 
sadly.  "I  have  such  faith  in  her  that  I  can't  believe 
she  will  have  thrown  over  her  own  views  and  principles 
without  ..." 

Hales  interrupted  him  almost  rudely. 

"  Can't  the  woman  see  that  she  will  do  him  far  more 
harm  by  this  preposterous  suppression?  There  will  be 
the  wildest  notions  of  the  iniquity  of  the  suppressed 
play.  And  as  to  herself,  she  will  be  a  by-word  in  the 
history  of  literature!" 

Stephen  was  getting  angry. 

"  Damn  the  history  of  literature!  She  is  too  great  a 
woman  to  think  of  herself. " 

"  But  she  might  think  of  him,  she  might  think  of  the 
world!" 

"Look  here,"  said  Stephen,  trying  to  speak  coolly, 
"  I  am  going  to  do  my  best.  I  shall  go  to  her  now  and 
see  what  can  be  done.  I  said  I  could  not  interfere,  but 
I  believe  I  ought.  Only  remember  this,  Hales,  what- 
ever she  does  about  this,  she  is  acting  against  all  her 
own  deepest  wishes ;  if  she  destroys  it  she  is  doing  it 
for  no  petty  reason. " 

"That  's  no  comfort  to  me, "  said  Hales.  " I  don't 
care  one  way  or  another  about  Mrs.  Blake's  motives. 
If  she  commits  this  crime,  her  motives  won't  make  the 
thing  any  better.  You  're  going?  Well,  I  'm  afraid 
you  will  be  weak  with  her,  but  I  can't  think  of  any- 


Horace    BlaKe  411 

body  else.  Remember  there  will  be  a  tremendous 
outcry,  and  you  are  not  the  man  to  enjoy  that.  Well, 
good-bye,  I  must  see  your  wife  some  day."  His 
habitual  gruff  kindness  was  struggling  with  his  deep 
irritation.  "I  was  sorry  I  could  not  be  at  your  wed- 
ding— I  can't  face  those  functions."  Then  suddenly 
he  burst  out  again,  "For  Heaven's  sake,  save  that 
play!" 

Stephen  walked  very  slowly  away  from  the  house. 
He  had  his  own  share  of  the  older  man's  consuming 
passion  for  great  literature,  and  he  could  not  believe 
that  Kate's  passion  for  the  glory  of  Horace  Blake  was 
not  a  greater  thing  yet.  He  felt  that  he  was  at  the 
outskirts  of  a  mystery  and  he  dreaded  to  penetrate 
further. 


XII 
WHY  DIDN'T  YOU  UNDERSTAND? 

KATE  was  leaning  back  in  a  deep  chair  in  the 
drawing-room:  the  subdued  sunshine  passed 
softly  through  the  blinds.  Stephen  loved  the  room 
for  Trix's  sake,  and  for  the  immense  satisfaction  it 
gave  to  the  eyes  by  day  or  night.  To-day,  nervous 
as  he  was,  he  felt  the  impression  of  charm  as  he  came 
in.  As  Kate  came  forward  he  thought  he  saw  a  change 
in  her  face — she  looked  to  him  as  if  she  had  been  ill, 
she  was  surely  very  white  and  thin. 

She  shook  hands  and  then  put  her  left  hand  on  his 
arm  for  a  moment. 

"I  know  what  you  have  come  about,  Stephen,"  she 
said.  "You  have  heard  what  I  have  done?" 

Stephen  steeled  himself — he  would  be  true  to  his 
own  convictions. 

"I  am  aghast, "  he  said. 

Kate  gave  a  weary  sigh.  She  sank  back  into  her 
chair  and  waited.  Stephen  tried  to  put  the  case 
strongly,  tried  to  make  her  see  things  even  as  Hales 
saw  them.  She  let  him  go  on,  watching  him  sadly, 
but  her  eyes  were  bright.  He  thought  it  might  be  the 
brightness  of  tears. 

"  Oh,  I  hate  having  to  say  all  this  to  you ! "  he  cried. 
"If  it  were  not  of  such  deadly  importance  nothing  in 
Heaven  or  earth  would  make  me  trouble  you." 

"I  know  that,"  said  Kate  very  gently. 

She  had  not  always  been  gentle  with  him.  He 
412 


Horace   BlaKe  413 

could  recall  how  the  low  thunder  of  her  tones  had 
passed  over  his  head  when  they  had  disagreed  before. 

"But,  Stephen,  don't  you  know  that  I  think  all  you 
have  just  said,  and  feel  it,  or  rather  have  felt  it,  with 
terrible  pain,  pain  you  can  hardly  imagine?  Do  you 
not  understand,  too,  that  I  realise  that  wherever 
Horace's  name  is  honoured,  I  shall  always  be  blamed 
for  destroying  that  last  play?" 

It  was  in  her  mind  that  it  would  never  be  known 
how  she  had  fostered  his  genius,  lived  for  it,  suffered 
for  it,  that  she  would  be  a  by- word  for  a  scrupulous, 
ignorant,  intolerable  woman  who  had  robbed  the  world 
of  a  master-piece.  Enormous  as  the  loss  of  the  play 
must  appear  to  Stephen,  it  was  nothing  to  the  magni- 
tude of  the  loss  to  Kate  herself. 

"I  thought  so,"  cried  Stephen.  "I  knew.  I  knew 
my  ideas  about  this  were  only  a  shadow  of  your  own 
ideas,  but  then  ..." 

"All  I  can  say  is  that  I  know  his  wishes  now  quite 
plainly.  Also  I  know,  and  this  is  the  strange  thing, 
that  though  it  is  a  crime  to  destroy  a  work  of  genius, 
it  may  be  a  greater  crime  to  give  life  to  an  evil  thing. 
I  have  learned  that  also  from  him.  The  question  as 
to  which  is  the  greater  sin  in  this  case  might  be  an 
insoluble  problem  for  me,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that 
while  he  was  living  he  had  the  right  to  destroy  his  own 
creation.  It  was  a  trick  that  deceived  him,  he  was 
tricked  out  of  his  rights.  That  is  to  me,  now  the 
conclusive  argument.  Stephen" — her  low  voice  had 
a  beseeching  note  that  was  new  to  him, — "you  and  I 
know  each  other  enough  for  me  to  ask  you  to  trust  me. 
In  kindness  and  pity  leave  this  matter  alone.  You 
were  right  to  come,  right  to  say  what  you  have  said, 
but  need  you  say  any  more?" 


414  Horace    BlaKe 

Stephen  felt  a.  pang  at  his  heart,  but  he  could  not 
give  in  so  easily. 

"Only  one  thing,  I  must  force  myself  to  say  one 
thing  more.  Was  he  quite  himself,  in  full  possession 
of  his  mind,  when  he  decided  this  question?" 

Kate  sat  forward,  covered  her  face  with  her  hands ; 
then  she  got  up  and  walked  to  the  window  and  stood 
with  her  back  to  him. 

"He  was  absolutely  himself,"  she  said  in  a  low 
voice  and  then  she  came  back  into  the  room  and  stood 
by  the  chimney-piece.  There  was  a  change  in  her 
face,  there  was  no  longer  any  expression  of  distress  or 
petition,  she  seemed  to  be  at  a  distance  from  him, 
preoccupied.  She  certainly  was  changed — he  felt 
nervous.  There  was  something  deeply  impressive  in 
the  tall  figure  and  the  rapt  white  face.  A  little  smile 
came  on  her  lips  and  went  again,  and  she  spoke  with 
evident  difficulty  and  no  acute  sense  of  the  presence 
of  her  listener. 

"I  thought  that  his  faculties  had  been  weakened — 
that  the  effort  of  the  play  had  exhausted  him."  Her 
left  hand  lay  on  the  corner  of  the  marble  chimney- 
piece,  she  pressed  the  right  one  on  it.  "I  thought, 
too,  that  when  his  mind  was  weakened  he  had  sunk 
altogether  into  superstitions  and  self-delusions. 

"Soon  after  your  wedding  I  received  from  the  old 
cure  a  letter  for  Trix,  written  by  Horace,  which  I  must 
give  you,  and  a  little  copy-book  with  notes  of  his  own 
of  the  kind  he  was  always  making.  I  have  read  the 
notes  and  at  last  I  have  read  what  Trix  wrote  for  you. 

"I  had  done  what  my  father  always  condemned. 
I  had  made  up  my  mind,  before  I  knew  the  evidence, 
that  I  could  judge  exactly  what  happened  to  Horace 
at  the  end.  With  all — "  she  hesitated,  "in  spite  of 


Horace    BlaKe  415 

all  my  love  I  had  judged  him  incapable  of  any  higher 
life.  I  had  so  long  schooled  myself  to  take  him  as  he 
was  that  I  had  a  settled  opinion  of  him.  I  could  sum 
up  what  I  supposed  happened  at  the  end  as  supersti- 
tion, cowardice,  and  melodrama.  But,  Stephen — 
She  turned  towards  him  with  flashing  eyes.  "He  did 
change — change  utterly.  He  was  calm,  brave,  honest, 
utterly  honest.  He  was  not  priest-ridden,  for  he 
clearly  speaks  for  himself,  and  with  singularly  charac- 
teristic touches."  She  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands.  "He — but  I  can't  talk  of  it,  Stephen,  only 
conceive  what  it  is  to  know  that  he  was  purified, 
raised  to  a  higher  life,  that  he  faced  death  as  bravely 
as  my  father  faced  it." 

Stephen  had  never  seen  her  cry  before.  He  was 
astonished  as  well  as  exceedingly  touched.  And  yet 
his  judgment  almost  at  once  told  him  that  it  was 
absurd  to  be  surprised;  this  was  much  more  natural 
than  any  state  of  mind  that  had  gone  before.  Loving 
Horace's  memory  as  she  did,  the  wonder  was  that  she 
had  not  tried  to  idealise  him  throughout.  This  tender 
little  smile  coming  and  going  on  the  strong  mouth  was 
much  more  natural  than  the  stern  lines  in  which  it  had 
been  set  before.  It  had  come  at  last,  the  soft  mist  of 
illusion,  and  he  could  not  grudge  it,  but  in  a  moment 
he  realised  the  enormous  change  in  their  positions. 
She  had  rebuked  him  sternly  for  his  idealising  attitude 
at  first,  she  who  knew  Horace  too  well.  "He  was  a 
bad  man  but  a  great  one" — he  heard  the  stern,  vehe- 
ment note  that  had  been  in  her  voice  when  she  said 
that.  As  in  a  dream  that  other  talk  shadowed  this 
one.  In  the  midst  of  a  sympathy  that  hurt  him,  the 
practical  view  would  insist  on  recognition.  What 
conceivable  measure  could  there  be  between  the 


416  Horace    BlaKe 

Horace  Blake  of  the  book  that  was  now  growing  fast 
and  this  latest  Horace  seen  through  these  tears? 

"I  lowered  my  standards,"  he  heard  her  say, 
"debased  my  mind  to  excuse  him,  to  suit  myself  to 
him  so  uselessly  and  basely,  and  then  he  was  cleansed. 
It  is  of  a  terrible  cleansing  that  his  words  speak  and 
of  which  unconsciously  Trix  gives  evidence;  perhaps 
that  cleansing  did  not  even  end  with  his  death. 
Stephen,  there  is  something  so  living  in  those  papers 
that  strangely,  perhaps  unreasonably,  I  have  come  to 
think  of  Horace  as  if  he  were  living  now.  The  idea  is 
stronger  than  I  am.  I  told  myself  when  I  first  became 
conscious  of  it,  that  it  was  merely  the  hereditary 
inclination  of  the  descendant  of  Christians;  but  that 
would  not  explain  it  or  stop  it — Horace  is  living  a 
life  of  expiation.  Does  that  seem  terrible  to  you?  I 
don't  know  how  or  where,  but  I  know  I  can  live  it  with 
him." 

Stephen  felt  almost  irritably  conscious  of  the  beauty 
of  the  idea  that  was  being  revealed  to  him.  Easily, 
half-consciously,  he  had  taken  for  granted  that  there 
was  a  future  life;  when  his  father  died,  he  had  taken 
comfort  for  his  mother  and  himself  in  what  is  called 
a  future  hope.  But  the  beauty  and  the  pathos  of  this 
hope  dawning  now  in  Kate's  heart,  a  light  revealed 
through  the  insistence  of  her  love,  struck  him  im- 
mensely. And  yet  there  was  a  repulsion  he  could  not 
quite  keep  under.  Horace's  spirit  as  a  thing  of  evil 
was  constantly  present  with  him  now,  he  had  felt  as  if 
the  biography  must  demoralise  any  writer  who  did  not 
actually  hate  him. 

"Expiation ! "  Good  Heavens,  plenty  of  that  would 
be  needed!  Yet  nothing  in  her  face  betrayed  any 
sense  of  Stephen  being  aloof,  out  of  sympathy  with 


Horace   BlaKe  417 

what  she  was  telling  him.  She  was  too  full  of  her  own 
thought  to  be  keenly  aware  of  him. 

"I  go  no  further  than  that,"  she  sighed.  "What 
there  was  in  the  superstitious  practices  of  his  child- 
hood that  helped  towards  the  higher  life  of  those  last 
weeks  I  cannot  see.  I  still  feel  that  I  could  not  speak 
to  that  curb,  to  anybody  who  would  think  of  him  as  a 
sacristan's  saint.  Stephen,  he  never  let  them  come 
between  him  and  me.  He  never  left  me  out  in  the  cold, 
he  was  never  happy  without  longing  to  draw  me  into 
it.  Can  you  imagine  what  it  is  to  me  to  have  him 
really  mine,  not  anybody  else's?" 

Ah,  there  Stephen  heard  the  deep  human  note.  It 
came  from  the  foundation  of  her  nature;  in  her  the 
yearning  pain  of  the  human  heart  had  been  comforted 
by  the  infinite  greatness  of  love.  He  was  beginning  to 
be  carried  out  of  himself  as  he  had  been  carried  out  of 
himself  by  other  great  things, — great  music,  great  art, 
great  poetry ;  but  he  was  yielding  reluctantly  because 
of  the  exceeding  difficulties  that  must  be  faced  and 
which  it  was  dangerous  to  forget. 

"If  I  am  never  to  see  him  again,  it  is  still  a  real 
truth  that  he  was  and  is  mine.  And  I  cannot  help  the 
feeling  that  it  is  for  an  infinite  future  that  he  is  mine, 
and  that  our  unity  is  part  of  a  unity  with  what  is 
greater  yet.  He  appealed  to  me  to  understand  that 
what  is  greatest  must  be  able  to  do  the  greatest  as  well 
as  to  be  the  greatest.  The  Infinite  cannot  be  denied 
the  power  to  forgive. " 

As  she  stopped  on  that  thought,  Stephen  took  his 
eyes  off  her  unwillingly — he  covered  them  with  his 
hands.  Faintly  he  seemed  to  remember  that  long  ago 
she  had  thought  the  Christian  doctrine  of  forgiveness, 
to  be  immoral — he  had  answered  that  when  one  for- 
a? 


4i8  Horace    BlaKe 

gave  anybody  the  action  did  not  feel  immoral.  She 
had  been  suddenly  moved  and  he  had  not  known  then 
why  his  words  had  struck  home  to  her.  As  she  began 
to  speak  again  he  became  simply  full  of  her  and  her 
story. 

Her  mind  could  not  leave  the  thought  of  Horace. 

"There  is  nothing  in  these  notes  unlike  himself. 
All  his  life  he  analysed  all  that  happened  to  him,  he 
analyses  in  these  notes  what  passed  in  himself  during 
those  last  weeks  up  to  a  certain  point,  but  there  are 
sudden  reserves.  It  is  as  if  he  said  '  Hush,  we  children 
must  not  speak  here,  this  is  the  Holy  of  Holies.' 
Then  I  feel  hushed  too.  Perhaps  I  am  speaking  too 
much  now." 

"You  can't  do  that,"  said  Stephen.  He  had  never 
felt  the  tender,  protective  filial  instinct  more  strongly 
than  he  felt  it  now.  He  did  not  know  that  he  smiled 
at  her  as  the  only  way  of  sympathy  with  her  tears  that 
flowed  so  easily. 

"But,  Stephen,  though  I  can  only  speak  to  you,, 
and  that,  I  believe,  only  this  once,  the  strange  thing  is 
that  I  choose  you  although  you  are  the  person  I  don't 
understand.  Your  goodness  first  drew  me  to  you." 

This  strange  idea  made  Stephen  feel  rather  small 
and  unworthy. 

"You  were  better,  I  knew,  by  instinct  than  other 
men  I  had  met.  You  are  good  and  you  are  a  Christian. 
I  have  been  reading  the  Gospels  for  the  first  time,  and 
I  see  that  the  main  notion  in  them  is  that  sin  is  not 
irremediable.  I  was  taught  that  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  sin,  but  that  there  were  noble  characters  and 
base  characters.  I  never  dreamt  of  the  base  elements 
being  transmuted  into  the  noblest.  But  why  did  you 
not  understand?  Trix  was  not  brought  up  a  Christian 


Horace    BlaKe  419 

as  you  were.  Why,  when  you  read  the  horrible  things 
I  sent  you  as  material  for  the  Life,  did  not  you,  who 
had  seen  him  near  the  end,  you  who  had  read  Trix's 
story,  say  to  me,  '  Both  are  true,  the  vileness  and  the 
nobility  that  came  out  of  that  awful  cleansing'?  I 
am  not  a  Christian,  but  I  recognise  as  absolute  truth 
from  the  evidence  before  me  that  there  was  a  tre- 
mendous struggle  to  be  pure,  a  mysterious  strengthen- 
ing of  the  will — much  peace,  if  at  times  a  dark  peace. 
But,  Stephen,  my  son,  as  you  are  a  Christian,  why  did 
you  not  understand?" 

There  was  a  touch  of  her  old  vehemence  as  she 
turned  upon  him  with  the  question.  It  was  the  last 
reproach  he  could  have  expected  from  her,  and  it 
added  dreadfully  to  the  difficulties  of  the  situation 
that  she  should  reproach  him  now  from  so  absolutely 
different  a  standpoint,  and  yet  it  was  perfectly  true 
that  he  had  never  thought  for  a  moment  of  placing 
Horace  Blake  within  the  moral  area  of  the  Gospels; 
indeed,  the  idea  seemed  almost  to  be  irreverent.  A 
poor  fallen  woman,  a  murderer,  a  thief — he  would  have 
easily  believed  in  their  reformation ;  but  like  many  of 
us  he  had  half-consciously  felt  that  the  line  must  be 
drawn  somewhere.  There  were  characters  so  vile  and 
rotten  that  their  very  existence  was  a  difficulty,  and 
any  real  change  in  them  unthinkable.  How  strangely 
he  remembered  at  that  moment  how  at  their  second 
meeting  Kate  had  asked  him  if  he  were  a  Christian. 
Now  she  wanted  to  understand — she  always  wanted 
to  get  at  the  core  of  a  question — why  his  Christianity 
had  not  explained  her  husband  to  him  all  along?  And 
he  could  not  answer  her.  He  was  startled  and  greatly 
troubled.  How  much  had  he  not  thought  and  strug- 
gled and  strained !  How  had  he  not  tried  one  way  and 


42O  Horace   BlaKe 

another  way  and  yet  another  way  in  which  he  might 
write  the  Life  of  Horace  Blake!  He  had  seen  in- 
numerable difficulties ;  he  had  been  through  so  many 
alternations  as  to  how  to  write  the  Life,  but  he  had 
never  realised  that  the  greatest  difficulty  of  all  lay  in 
his  own  limitations.  He  began  to  realise  it  now. 
Civilised,  sympathetic,  cultured,  reverent  as  he  was, 
he  had  never  had  a  large  enough  scale  for  his  work. 
Later  on  he  would  tell  himself  contemptuously  that 
he  had  worked  with  an  inch  measure  all  through,  and 
that  even  his  vision  of  the  realistic  picture  of  Horace 
had  only  been  a  modern  decadent  taste  for  impres- 
sionism. This  view  was  what  was  just  dawning  on 
him  now,  but  one  point  was  already  clear  and  convinc- 
ing. It  had  been  the  mistake  of  this  strange,  vehe- 
ment friend  of  his  to  suppose  him  capable. 

' '  I  have  worked  at  it  this  way  and  the  other  way  and 
every  way,"  he  said  at  last,  and  his  voice  broke  for  a 
moment.  "Let  me  give  up.  You  may  be  right,  that 
I  ought  to  have  understood  his  life  as  you  understand 
it  now,  but  you  see  I  did  not.  I  can't  tell  now  where 
I  am  to  blame,  or  how  differently  I  might  have  acted 
had  I  been  a  bigger  man  or  a  Christian  such  as  you 
would  expect  a  Christian  to  be.  I  did  not  under- 
stand it  as  you  do  now.  I  doubt  if  I  ever  shall.  And 
so  you  must  let  me  give  it  up. " 

At  that  moment  the  ordinary  values  of  life  were  all 
changed  for  him.  Yet  it  could  not  be  said  that  he  did 
not  suffer  for  the  loss  of  his  work,  the  loss  of  the  hope 
of  fame,  of  success.  Only  he  discerned  the  impossibil- 
ity of  the  task,  he  felt  that  it  was  beyond  the  com- 
pass of  his  powers,  and  he  was  too  sincere  as  an  artist 
and  as  a  man  to  be  willing  to  undertake  what  he 
honestly  felt  to  be  beyond  him. 


Horace  BlaKe  421 

There  had  been  a  little  silence  during  which  she 
watched  him  with  a  tender,  puzzled  kindness.  She 
had  never  felt  so  conscious  of  his  youth,  of  the  untried 
element  in  him  that  seemed  a  promise  of  distant 
rather  than  of  present  achievement. 

"Stephen," — she  spoke  with  hesitation — "could 
you  not  take  in  on  your  canvas  the  whole  truth — 
extenuate  nothing,  neither  the  sins  nor  the  great 
change?  Trix's  story,  as  you  used  to  ask  me,  you  could 
put  in  bodily.  It  is  exquisite.  If  you  can  enlarge 
your  conception  to  grasp  the  whole  truth,  go  on.  If 
not,  Stephen,  you  are  right:  it  would  be  better  to  give 
it  up." 

Stephen  stood  up  and  looked  at  the  rug  at  his  feet. 

"No,"  he  said,  "I  should  simply  fail.  I  'm  not 
capable  of  it.  Don't  try  me  again.  You  would  only 
have  one  more  disappointment.  You  have  taken  me 
by  surprise  now.  I  cannot  readjust  my  ideas  quickly 
enough  to  know  how  far  I  could  follow  you,  but  even 
if  I  did  see  to  some  extent  with  your  eyes,  I  could  not 
do  the  work  as  it  ought  to  be  done. " 

Kate  did  not  contradict  him. 

"You  don't  think  me  unkind?" 

"You,  unkind!"  he  cried.  "It  was  your  kindness 
that  made  the  mistake  of  giving  it  me  to  do,  and  you 
are  kinder  still  in  letting  me  off  it." 

It  seemed  as  if  they  could  not  part  and  could  not 
speak.  The  deep  affection  between  them  warmed  the 
atmosphere  of  their  silence.  At  last  he  began  in  a 
quick,  low  voice: 

"Find  somebody  else.  ..."  Then  he  checked 
himself.  "  No, "  he  went  on,  "  I  will  speak  the  truth. 
It  may  sound  like  hurt  vanity,  but  it  is  n't  that. 
Could  anybody  do  it?  Is  it  not  too  strange  and  too 


422  Horace    BlaKe 

intimate  a  thing  to  be  dealt  with  quite  truly  in  litera- 
ture? Can  it  come  into  a  frame  with  all  its  strange 
absence  of  proportion  and  perspective?  It  seems  to 
me  at  this  moment  that  it  can  only  be  understood. 
..."  He  stumbled,  and  his  colour  deepened  as  he 
broke  through  a  deeper  reserve  in  trying  to  express 
what  was  by  no  means  clear  to  himself.  "  It  can  only 
be  understood,"  he  repeated,  "however  dimly,  by 
opening  windows  into  the  Infinite." 

He  was  not  in  the  least  prepared  for  what  she  said 
next. 

"I  have  already  decided  not  to  give  it  to  anybody 
else," — she  spoke  quietly — "and  I  cannot  and  will 
not  do  it  myself.  There  are  things  I  cannot  put  into 
words,  that  I  can  convey  to  no  one  else  half  as  well  as 
to  you,  and  after  all,  how  little  I  can  convey  to  you ! 
Those  things  must  be  left  on  the  other  side  of  silence. 
I  have  learned  at  last  that  I  must  leave  much  alone. 
All  my  life  I  have  been  too  anxious  to  take  responsibil- 
ity on  myself.  As  I  see  no  possibility  of  making 
Horace  understood  I  shall  leave  the  matter  alone. 
After  all,  no  Life  of  him  could  tell  the  whole  truth, 
and  half  the  truth  would  be  a  lie.  Better  no  biography 
at  all  than  a  false  one. " 


FINIS 


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vicissitudes  and  character-testing  experiences, 
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G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

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